Five Books From North American Finnish Authors
Finns are among the most literate people in the world. That goes for their cousins in Canada and the USA as well. They not only read extensively, but they also manage to write voluminously. Here are five books recently published: The Life of Bartholomew G. by Ernest Hekkanen; Guarding Passage by Beth L. Virtanen; Are All The Heroes Gone? by Margaret Olson Webster; Ukkonen ja Salama by Gladys Koski Holmes; and The Co-op Label by Marlene Wisuri and Jim Johnson.
The Life of Bartholomew G.
Perhaps one of the most prolific contemporary writers is Finnish Canadian Ernest Hekkanen. Hekkanen, who has been a frequent short story contributor to New World Finn, published his 35th book earlier this year. The Life of Bartholomew G. is, according to the publisher, a “terribly funny, but strangely tragic novella”. The main character of the novella - Bartholomew G. - has been working on an M.A. thesis about Franz Kafka for over 20 years and has come to adopt many of Kafka’s feelings and attitudes. The book, 120 pages long, takes you through three hours of Bartholomew G.’s life. That’s about how long it will take most people to read it. It is available from New Orphic Publishers for $18.00. 706 Mill Street, Nelson, BC, V1L 4S5, Canada.
Guarding Passage
In a previous issue of New World Finn we published some poems and photographs by Beth L. Virtanen, an associate professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico. Those poems plus nearly 80 more have been bound together in Guarding Passage published by Penfield Press.
I couldn’t stop reading her poems once I picked up the book. I felt like I was having an intimate conversation with her, yet, at the same time as it was intimate, the boundaries of self were respected.
Beth’s book is available from the New World Finn Bookstore.
Are All The Heroes Gone?
Margaret Olson Webster’s second book – is a story that is a blend of Kalevala myth with the lives of her children and grandchildren. It is a book that is written for children, but one that adults can enjoy as well.
This book can be a delightful way for parents (or other adults) to help children understand that real heroes can be the people we meet in our everyday lives - even in our own homes! In the book, young Teddy become enamored with Väinämöinen when his father tells him Kalevala stories. The two of them make a trip to Karelia from the USA where Teddy learns about Väinämöinen’s spirit.
The book is available from: Blue Pearl Books, 10008 422nd, Tamarack, MN 55787. $16.00 (plus 6% in Minnesota).
Ukkonen ja Salama
Gladys Koski Holmes, the award winning artist living in northern Minnesota, has published a children’s book about two kittens who are healed of a defect in their feet by gnomes on a winter night. Gladys wrote and illustrated the story.
The text is in both Finnish and English. It gives an opportunity for children with Finnish heritage to see what the Finnish language looks like, and possibly become familiar with it. It can work as a teaching tool about Finland. The book is $20 and available from Gladys at 8122 Hwy 53, Angora MN 55703-8005.
The Co-op Label
by Jim Johnson and Marlene Wisuri
Published by Dovetailed Press
Reviewed by Hanna Erpestad
The Co-op Label, a new publication of Jim Johnson’s poetry and Marlene Wisuri’s photographs and photomontages, is a complex and engaging portrayal and exploration of immigrant experiences of 20th century America, particularly the cooperative movement that inspired and influenced many Finnish American lives. Dedicated to “immigrants and co-operators everywhere,” the authors reach out to a wide audience, reminding readers of their common immigrant history and their connection to one another. As the opening poem observes, “We are all immigrants together. All our possessions in a single trunk. The photographs of ancestors stained with olive oil.”
The sensitive, skillful interplay between Johnson’s words and Wisuri’s images reveals a history that is sometimes heartwarming, sometimes sad or disturbing, and often familiar. Many of the poems give life, sound, and color to harsh realities captured by familiar black-and-white photos of family albums. One example is “Board Feet,” which uses active, present tense verb forms to give a lively, yet painful, rhythm and sound to a photograph of two lumberjacks cutting down a tall pine, “their biceps throbbing against the frozen iron” and “the ears ringing, ringing as if wedges were hammered in, ringing in the sound now like growth rings pacing out across the stump.”
Some of the poems attempt to capture the human story behind a carefully staged family portrait. In the photo that accompanies “Black Spruce,” a father with three children sits in front of a rather barren, lonely house. The poem tells his sad story: “His wife dead. I can see him with his three children sitting there thoughtless as those old shirts out on the line.” The photo for “Now You Tell Me What You Believe” is equally startling. It is a portrait of a father, a very young mother, and their infant child in an open casket, “a coffin no longer than a violin case.” The poem creates a somber context for the photo, a familiar Mid Western immigrant story: “the hell is always north, where they came to the new world because it was like the old world.”
While some of the poems seem to have been inspired by old photos, some of Wisuri’s photomontages appeared to have been created to set a stage for Johnson’s poems. For example, the image for “Advice To A Young Wife” uses an effective technique to pair an image of a young woman with a negative, faded image of an older woman, perhaps a mother, enjoying a cup of coffee at a kitchen table. The picture and the poem work well together to capture a moment in which the older woman passes on domestic advise to a young wife: “Look at the old photographs while I fix coffee. I always spooned 42 ground beans into a granite pot of boiling water, poured it out through a strainer...”
Many of the book’s poems and images inspire closer investigation, some even engaging a willing reader in a small mystery. The poem “Knock At The Door,” for instance, describes a wind that would “come to the door and knock, knock, knock all night long. The linoleum cold. The fire out.” However, who hears the knocking? Is anyone home? The poem teases us by ending, “The wind would know.” The answer may be in the picture: The door is hooked from the outside. Nobody is home.
While it is easy for me to comment on, and have fun with, the photos and poems that portray common everyday realities of immigrant lives – of strong women, of oppressed women, of young Heikki’s love letter to his beloved, of life and death – I struggle more with the collection’s political subject matter. The cooperative ideals, the communist and anti-communist sentiments, and the red-scare of the McCarthy era of the 1950s have no obvious connection to my personal history. I am a first-generation Finnish immigrant, a daughter of a Lutheran minister, with no personal ties to the co-operative movement or strong leftist politics. Yet, as a Finn, I recognize The Co-op Label as a story of my people. I have friends, friends of friends, neighbors, and acquaintances whose hopes, dreams, fears, and disappointments Johnson and Wisuri portray with great sensitivity and honesty.
For example, I am touched by the poem “At Kaleva Hall,” a description of a young child’s visit to a public poetry reading as I have heard many stories of such gatherings in Northern Minnesota. I know, of course, about Stalin, Lenin, Gus Hall, and the hammer and sickle, and I can find symbolic meaning in the contrast of the white birches and the red blood in “Joseph Stalin Pauses Among The Birches In Karelia.” I respect the co-operative spirit that inspired many Finnish immigrants to move here “to be the same,” as the poem “Location” explains. And more so, I understand the regret and frustration that many feel about the gradual loss, or transformation, of co-operative ideals, which according to “What Happened To The History Of The Co-Operative Movement” may now be “Nothing but poems.”
Despite what our personal histories and experiences are, I think many readers of The Co-op Label are glad to discover that we have Jim Johnson’s written observations and Marlene Wisuri’s poetic images to remind us of the past. A fitting tribute to the 20th century collaborative ideals, their collaboration is inspiring and contagious. Reading the book’s concluding poem “That” and examining the photo that accompanies it, I want to find my own seat in a public hall, among my own people, and feel that “We are connected, truly connected, to this world.” Perhaps I could hear a new rumor or find an answer to an all too familiar musing in the poem “A List of Names”:
I didn’t know
what the Heikkilas said about the Hovilas or
what the Lumppios did in ‘23 after the Heinos
married Hills and Kujawas sold cows to the
Luomas and the Kurkkis joined the same church
as the Siltonens and not the Alatalas. Maybe
you know but
I didn’t know.
(Inspired by the co-operative spirit, I have decided to overlook some minor spelling errors in the collection’s Finnish translations.)
Hanna Erpestad teaches literature at Lake Superior College in Duluth, Minnesota.