Jason Prokowiew, Oberlin Alumnus '01 and author returns to campus on Wednesday, November 4 at 4:30, Hallock Auditorium, to discuss his intergenerational book War Boys: A Father and Son Memoir, and how a Winter Term project turned into a 27-year artistic endeavor.
Copies of War Boys: A Father and Son Memoir will be available for purchase and personalized signing.
Abstract
War Boys is an extraordinary exploration of a family experiencing intergenerational trauma: an adult son seeking to understand his terrifying father, interwoven with a biography of his father, who experienced unimaginable horrors as a child during World War II. As a child, Jason Prokowiew lived in fear of his father, an abusive alcoholic. Full of shame and guilt, Prokowiew recounts a lonely childhood, colored by struggles with weight, self-image, and his emerging identity as a gay man. Impelled to confront the trauma of his childhood, Prokowiew documents the stories of his father’s own trauma that began when Nazis murdered his family at the start of the war. In War Boys, Prokowiew retraces his father’s harrowing journey to understand how he survived the war and why he became the terrifying father Jason knew. In an era where generational estrangement is common, War Boys inspires with its account of this father and son, both battle-scarred survivors, and how they heal their relationship through the power of claiming and telling their own stories—and listening to one another.
Author
Jason Prokowiew received the PEN America/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History and a Fulbright Scholar Award for War Boys and the Aurora Polaris Award for Creative Nonfiction from Trio House Press. His writing has appeared in the North American Review, the Guardian, Salon, WBUR's Cognoscenti, Roxane Gay's "The Audacity," and on WORLD Channel's Stories from the Stage, where his piece "Sing" is the most watched in the show's history.
Sponsored by the JD Lewis Teaching & Research Fund, Peace & Conflict Studies, REEES, and the Office of Alumni Engagement.
