Today’s mentorship session wasn’t about my writing. Lydia showed British Library archival materials from Between Two Worlds. Photographs, letters, interview transcripts documenting Ukrainian displacement.
The materials were raw. Not polished for public consumption. Handwritten letters with grammar mistakes. Blurry photographs. Interview transcripts capturing hesitations and contradictions. Messiness of actual human experience before it gets shaped into narrative.
We discussed preservation of migrant stories. How documentation becomes history. Official archives tend to collect success narratives. Person who struggled for years before finding stability doesn’t get archived. The failures and ambiguities disappear.
Lydia’s project deliberately includes difficult material. Not just triumph over adversity stories. Also confusion, regret, ongoing displacement that never resolves into belonging. More honest representation even if less inspiring.
Beginning to understand why she’s drawn to documentary filmmaking. There’s urgency in capturing these moments before they disappear into assimilation or return migration. First generation displacement looks different from second generation belonging. Those transition years get lost if nobody documents them.
My novels do similar work, but fiction allows me to avoid certain truths. Can make things tidier than they are. Documentary forces confrontation with messy reality.
She asked if I’d be interested in participating in her next documentary project. About migrant writers specifically. Too early to commit but the idea intrigues me.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
