About this Event
Join us on Wednesday, September 30 as Jason Prokowiew talks about his new book, War Boys: A Father and Son Memoir. He will be joined in conversation by Madeleine Blais.
About the Book
War Boys is an extraordinary exploration of a family experiencing intergenerational trauma: an adult son seeking to understand his terrifying and abusive 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. Lonely and 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.
About the Author
Jason Prokowiew won the PEN America/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History and a Fulbright Scholar Award for War Boys. His writing has appeared in The North American Review, Under the Sun, 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. He’s received additional support from Bread Loaf, Tin House, Ragdale, and the Mass Cultural Council. He lives on a lake in Massachusetts with his husband Dave and their greyhound Champ.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Odyssey Bookshop, 9 College Street, South Hadley, United States
USD 0.00
