Customer Reviews

Children of Strangers: Stories

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Anthony Bukoski grew up and lives in Superior, Wis., which provides the setting and the material for the stories in this story collection. Superior's working-class Polish community, with its church, school, and cultural life is more than just a backdrop, but forms an integral part of these stories. This is a rich selection of stories about an ethnic group whose experiences are not well-known and not well-appreciated, especially by those who proclaim the doctrines of multiculturalism. Bukoski's work is an important step toward remedying that situation. The story "Old Customs" is especially noteworthy. Told from the perspective of a young school girl watching her elderly Polish aunt in the last days of her life, living in a house and a garden filled with butterflies, the story highlights the losses and pain of the Polish experience in America. Aunt and niece share time looking at a book of dream interpretations, as the girl listens to fragments of her aunt's me! mories and imagines what life in Poland and as an immigrant was like. When young Marta learns, in school, that her aunt has died, she realizes how little she knows about this woman who has been so close to her. Bukoski has a singular ability to ambush the reader's emotions with a single line of dialogue. As Marta runs home, she cries: "Czekaj, auntie! Wait!" But it is already too late, for as a corridor of butterflies opens to the aunt's house hung with black crepe paper "where the old Polish ladies are already washing her body." Other ethnic groups are also present here: Native Americans, Vietnamese, and others, providing a full and rounded picture of ethnic diversity in a northern industrial city in the rust belt. The only minor criticisms of Bukoski's work are his very occasional errors in Polish history (Polish cavalry never charged Nazi tanks) and translation, and the sense that his characters sometimes exude that they, as Polish Americans, are dying o! ut. As CHILDREN OF STRANGERS shows, however, this is hardly! the case. Along with Suzanne Strempek Shea, Natalie Petesch, and others Bukoski is among a renaissance of Polish American literature, written in English, that is helping to redefine the experience of a major ethnic group in America. This book is highly recommended for readers of all ethnic backgrounds.

In a blowing, icy storm of clashing cultures, Bukoski climbs an aging train trestle that straddles a frozen river. He pins his characters' stories of hope, their cries for compassion, for deliverance, for understanding even within themselves, to rusting bars. Fluttering madly about, the fragile pages, filled with enduring themes, hold firm.

Scale the trestle and read his provocative words placed in an unusual setting! They are worth exposing yourself to his elements, for Bukoski captures unique emotions from protagonists young and old.

He know his people and lets us glimpse the stranger's mind.

I was a student of Mr. Buckoski's and decided one day to read his books in an attempt to understand him better. Polonaise seems to have a very large shadow cast over it. I was basically unimpressed with the majority of the stories. I will admit to getting in to a couple, but beyond that, they didn't seem to be very distinguished. None really caught my eye. I discussed this with Buckoski and ventured into a debate. He is a wonderful man, but aside from that, his writing is for the birds.