The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine

GG’s boxes are symbolic of history and How Family Stories Shape Identity. The boxes contain mementos from GG’s past. Matthew’s initial hope that he’ll find “some lost treasure of the tsars” or “jewel-covered eggs and golden sabers” (20) inside of them signals the boxes of containing a treasure, even though it is not the kind of treasure that Matthew expects. He gradually discovers that the boxes are a gateway to his familial history. As GG tells her story to Matthew, she uses the boxes’ contents to explain what happened to her and her cousins years prior. In this way, the box also symbolize GG’s secrets. She refuses Matthew’s help at first, not wanting to open the boxes and face the past. Not even Matthew or his mother know the magnitude of the secret GG has kept for her entire life. Like Pandora’s box, GG’s box contains terrible things: memories of starvation, fear, lies, and genocide. But it also contains family, courage, and the truth.

Matthew comes to rely upon the boxes’ contents once he translates GG’s story to his video project, and here, they represent the power of storytelling. In each video installment, he records himself “read[ing] from [the] journals and personal histories” and “show[ing] letters, newspaper articles, and photos” (327) GG has shared with him.