the passage of time, and simple neglect. From it, she explores the nationalist and feminist themes that animated immigrant discourse within the Polish ethnic community between the 1880s and the 1930s. Along the way, Majewski also has managed to assemble biographical profiles of hitherto little known Polish émigré writers who formed an influential cultural elite (and, in some measure, political cadre) in turn-of-the-century Polish America: the immigrant intelligentsia.
A thoroughly interdisciplinary work, Traitors and True Poles not only speaks to matters literary and cultural but also plumbs the foundations of one ethnic group’s “hyphenated American cultural identity.” Majewski persuasively argues that literature (and the arts) “were powerful ideological tools in the struggle to define Poland and Polishness, on both sides of the ocean” at a time when the Poles were a submerged and colonized nation (and later, when a post–World War I Poland, recreated as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, was compelled to reinvent itself). Examining a cluster of interlacing literary topics, Majewski shows that this transnational immigrant literature served as “an instrument of national definition and consolidation” during these years and that its audience was not the American or outside world but the immigrant community alone and for itself. Traitors and True Poles accordingly stands as a landmark work in the field of immigrant history, outsider literature, and ethnic studies.
Winner of the Polish American Historical Association’s prestigious Kulczycki Prize, Traitors and True Poles is the second volume in the new Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American Studies Series. The series revisits the historical and contemporary experience of one of America’s largest European ethnic groups and the history of a European homeland that has played a disproportionately important role in twentieth-century world affairs. The series will publish innovative monographs and more general works that investigate under- or unexplored topics or themes or that offer new, critical, revisionist, or comparative perspectives in Polish and Polish-American studies. Interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary in profile, the series seeks manuscripts on Polish immigration and ethnic communities, the country of origin, and its various peoples in history, anthropology, cultural studies, political economy, current politics, and related fields.
Publication of the Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American Studies Series marks a milestone in the maturation of the Polish studies field and stands as a fitting tribute to the scholars and organizations whose efforts have brought it to fruition. Supported by a series advisory board of accomplished Polonists and Polish-Americanists, the Polish and Polish-American Studies Series has been made possible through generous financial assistance from the Polish American Historical Association, the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, the Polish Chair at Central Connecticut State University, and St. Mary’s College of Ave Maria University and through institutional support from Wayne State University and Ohio University Press. As an ambitious new undertaking, the series meanwhile has benefited from the warm encouragement of a number of persons, including Gillian Berchowitz, the late Stanislaus Blejwas, Thomas Gladsky, Thaddeus Gromada, James S. Pula, David Sanders, and Thaddeus Radzilowski. The moral and material support from all of these institutions and individuals is gratefully acknowledged.
John J. Bukowczyk
Preface
BECAUSE NO RELIABLE bibliography of the Polish immigrant novels and short stories discussed in this study had ever been compiled, primary sources were identified through a painstaking (and ongoing) search, and by the occasional lucky break. While university repositories facilitated the process, it still meant tracking down clues and half-clues about authors and titles buried in Polish-language immigrant histories and memoirs, examining the catalogues and reading the shelves of Polish-American organizational libraries and archives, sorting through knee-deep papers in half-abandoned immigrant bookstores, and scanning hundreds of rolls of microfilmed newspapers. Despite my attempts to be comprehensive, some works have undoubtedly been missed. And because extant copies of several titles could not be located, it is also possible that a small number have been misidentified. It can only be hoped that further research will correct this record.
Early versions of sections of this work have been published as the following:
“Crossings and Double-Crossings: Polish-Language Immigrant Narratives of the Great Migration.” In Multilingual America: Transnationalism, Ethnicity, and the Languages of American Literature, ed. Werner Sollors. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
“The Politics of Polishness in the United States: American Literature in Polish Before World War II.” In Not English Only: Redefining “American” in American Studies, ed. Orm Øverland. European Contributions to American Studies 47. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2001.
A Family Reunion: Love, Sex, and the State of Marriage in Polish-American Literature. Occasional Papers in Polish and Polish American Studies, no. 3. New Britain: Polish Studies Program, Central Connecticut State University, 1997.
“Toward ‘A Pedagogical Goal’: Home, Nation, and Ethnicity in the Works of Polonia’s First Women Writers.” In Something of My Very Own to Say: Women Writers of Polish Descent, ed. Thomas S. Gladsky and Rita Holmes Gladsky. New York: Columbia University Press, East European Monograph Series, 1997.
“Wayward Wives and Delinquent Daughters: Polish-American Flappers in the Novels of Melania Nesterowicz.” Polish American Studies 53, 1 (Spring 1996).
To accommodate readers unfamiliar with the Polish language, the first mention of a Polish title is accompanied by a translation. Subsequent references are given in English. Finally, all translations, unless otherwise indicated, are mine.
Acknowledgments
THIS PROJECT COULD not have been completed without the kind help of many people who went out of their way to track down hard-to-find materials: the staff of the Polish Museum of America, including Jan Loryś, Halina Misterka, Małgorzata Kot, Leonard Kurdek, and Violetta Wóżnicka; Ewa Wołyńska of the Connecticut Polish Archives at Central Connecticut State University; Karen Rondestvedt, former director of the Alliance College Collection at the University of Pittsburgh; Jean Dickson and Brenda Battleson at the University of Buffalo; and the staff of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. Thanks also to Monsignor Roman Nir, Sister Angelita, and Krzysztof Tyburski of the Central Archives of Polonia, Orchard Lake, and to my colleagues at the Alumni Memorial Library of St. Mary’s College: being allowed to snoop freely among all those old Polish books has immensely enriched this work and my life.
In Poland, Franciszek Lyra facilitated my research at the Polish National Archives. And Danuta Pytlak of the American Studies Department at the University of Warsaw not only searched Polish libraries for primary sources but reminded me through her own work that this project was opening a door that others would also walk through.
I am grateful to those who opened their personal libraries to me and helped me with their professional expertise: Ed Martin, David and Gwidon Chełminski, Tamara Sochacka, Paul Valasek, and Regina Kościelska, as well as to the families of writers and publishers. Mark Yolles generously provided information about his father, Piotr. Basia Kocyan McCoy graciously opened her home and family papers to me as I researched her grandmother Melania Nesterowicz. Paul Paryski and Antony Plutynski enthusiastically shared material on their grandfather, Antoni Paryski.
Among those whose belief in this project most heartened me are my colleagues and friends in the Polish American Historical Association: Mary Cygan, Mary Erdmans, Tom Gladsky, Tom Napierkowski, John Radzilowski, John Bukowczyk, Thad Radzilowski, Bill Galush, the late Stan Blejwas, Anna Kirchman, Thad Gromada, Tony Bukoski, Jim Pula, and Victor Greene. Matt Jacobson, Orm Øverland, Gonul Pultar, Melinda Gray, Dag Blanck, and Werner Sollors helped pave the way for a field in which my own work could fit. And Gill
