When reality breaks into parts, islands, pieces – Yevgenia Beloruset's "Wartime Diary"

Abstract

This article focuses on Yevgenia Belorusets’s War Diary, which she kept during the first 47 days of the Russian invasion on Ukraine in 2022. The diarist, a Ukrainian photographer, writer, and artist describes how the war affects every aspect of her life. She uses various strategies to distance herself from traumatic events happening all around her — events that evoke a range of emotions. This distancing is necessary to narrate her experience and appeal to international readers, as she strongly believes that her voice must be heard. In this article, I present the author, examine her diary as a text intended for publication, and consider how trauma shapes its content and structure.

Keywords

• war
• Ukraine
• diary
• trauma