Jason Prokowiew is the author of the new book War Boys: A Father and Son Memoir. He lives in Massachusetts.
Q: Why did you decide to write this memoir?
A: Originally, I thought my dad’s story was so unusual, it was the best story I could find to tell as a writer. I had a sense even when I was young and I heard him tell his stories in a very casual way that listeners were drawn in by the tale of a little Russian boy adopted by Nazis.
When I got to college and my Russian politics professor showed great interest, I thought, the story mattered historically, and that also fueled my drive to tell the story of a child of war.
Q: How would you describe your relationship with your father?
A: Complicated. He was the boogeyman of my childhood. He drank heavily until I was 10 years old and was a source of abuse and neglect in that decade.
He then quit drinking cold turkey when I was 10 because he landed in the hospital with cirrhosis of the liver. I suddenly lived with a totally different father who was sober but a dry drunk, meaning he still exhibited many of the dysfunctional traits of an alcoholic, just without the actual drinking.
Our relationship shifted many times between the time he quit drinking and when he died 15 years later, when I was 25. I came out to him as Queer when I was 16, and our dynamic shifted greatly from that point because suddenly I was being honest with him about an important part of myself, and he had to contend with having a Queer son.
I was also 16 when I began singing and trying in school, after so long not doing anything with my life because my father had taught me throughout my childhood that I was stupid, so I didn’t think I could do anything with my brain or self.
My father loved the arts, and once I started performing in music and theatre and writing from the age of 16, he started being very interested in me.
Our biggest shift occurred between 1999 and 2001, when I recorded 50 hours of my father talking about his experiences in the war. He fought me at first about doing the recordings, but through the process of recording, he softened, he began to want to tell his stories, and we had several tear-soaked moments during that process.
I loved and liked my dad, but I do not forget or condone any of the abuse he inflicted on his family.
Q: The writer Karen Kirsten said of the book, “Jason reminds us we can’t choose our parents, but we can expose the pain they buried, empowering us to redefine our own identity and future. A haunting, beautifully written tribute to resilience, transformation, and family.” What do you think of that description?
A: I’m honored that Karen Kirsten of all people wrote this, after reading and admiring the hard work she did in her book Irena’s Gift, to uncover family secrets and write about them. Karen’s work was to grapple with and share her family’s difficult stories, and I think War Boys is in conversation with and a continuation of that idea.
In order to do differently than my family of origin would have me do, I needed to know the truths of my father’s stories, and I then grappled with them on the pages of War Boys.
I think that’s partially how I moved forward in life, with hopefully a better understanding of how I could be as a person in the world. I didn’t need to repeat familial cycles, but I could look at those cycles and choose differently.
I think that’s what Karen means when she writes about transformation specifically.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write this book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: The actual writing has been laborious and wonderful for me as a writer. I’ve had so many eyes on War Boys over the years helping me to mold it into what it is now.
It especially changed shape between 2021 and 2022 when I worked on it in a year-long program at GrubStreet in Boston called Memoir Incubator.
I knew going into that program that I wanted to expand War Boys to include my story of what it was like to be raised by a man who came of age during a war, after his family was murdered, and he was adopted by the murderers.
The Memoir Incubator, and my 10 colleagues there, proved to be safe landing places as I began to tell my own stories of childhood neglect and abuse at the hands of my father.
My shame about my own experiences shifted once I began telling those stories, and I found that the things I was once most scared to tell were not going to break me once I let them be known. In fact, I was better off for being authentically known rather than carrying these stories on my own.
As for readers, I hope they see my father’s resilience as a survivor of war but also the long-term consequences of war on children but also future generations. I hope War Boys reads as the antiwar book I hoped it would.
I also hope that readers draw from the Jason storyline that this little boy felt very alone in the world but still found a way in it, and he found his people. I hope that any reader who feels alone, feels some hope from the Jason journey.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Really, I am working on the publicity for War Boys, so I’ve been working on a 24-stop book tour that begins in July and runs through November. I’ll be in conversation across the country with some of my favorite writers, who happen to be my friends from the writing community, and I couldn’t be more excited for those exchanges.
As for writing, I’m excited to get away for a week-long residency this June where I’ll hopefully finish revisions on my Queer YA novel, Let Him Be.
After working on War Boys for 27 years, I wanted to try to write something quickly because I don’t think I have another 27 years to spend. I wrote the rough draft of Let Him Be in under a month, and I have plans for two sequels.
I’m also working on a second memoir called Fat Boy Fat, which is an exploration of what it’s meant to be in a fat, Queer body in America. I hope it also stands as a critique of the ubiquitous, dangerous American diet culture.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I couldn’t be at this point with War Boys without the writing community. From the actual writing of War Boys to the support in bringing War Boys to as many readers as possible, the community has stepped up for me and War Boys—for the scared little boys Volodya and Jason—again and again. I am so grateful for that.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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