摘要：Vasil Stefan Koban (1918-2007) was an American writer of Slovak origin. His cultural identity is, however, somewhere between Rusyn and Slovak, but all his writings were published in Slovak journals such as Slovakia, or Almanac run by National Slovak Society. The Slovak translation of his only novel, The Sorrows of Marienka, was published in 2006 with the subtitle Púť Slovákov za lepším životom do Ameriky. The book is about the life of his mother Marienka who after marriage to Ivan Kinda emigrates from Jarabina to Conemaugh, an American coal mine town. Excerpt from Michal: Biography of a Galician Coal Miner, 1906-1933 is a revised version of the story in which Michal, Koban’s father and Marienka’s second husband, loses his leg in an accident and he must stay in a hospital for a year. In both stories Koban uses lots of Slovak words, but on the other hand, he mentions that Michal helped to build the Russian Orthodox Church of St. John the Baptist in Conemaugh with other Galicians, his natives, since he was born in Habowa. Although he considered himself to be of Slovak origin, Koban is enlisted under Carpatho-Rusyn Literature in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature. The article focuses on manifestations of Slovak and Rusyn identity in Koban’s two most notable literary works.
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