“The city of their fathers”: Urban Space, Memory, and Language in Stuart Dybek’s Short Fiction

Izabella Kimak

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.15.15

Authors

Izabella Kimak Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2212-8174

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.15.15

Crossmark check for up

Keywords:

Stuart Dybek, Chicago, literature of neighborhood, memory, multilingual city

Abstract

Stuart Dybek is a writer invariably associated with his neighborhood of Pilsen/Little Village on Chicago’s Lower West Side. Having grown up there as a descendant of immigrants from Poland, Dybek frequently “revisits” his old neighborhood in his writing. His texts showcase the changes of the urban space, narrated through references to the material, social, cultural, and linguistic environment. In this essay, I will analyze two of Dybek’s texts—the sequence “Hot Ice” from his second collection of stories The Coast of Chicago and the story “Qué Quieres” from I Sailed with Magellan—to probe the palimpsestic construction of urban space, whereby the past, present, and future of urban orders are narrated simultaneously. Both texts illustrate ethnic succession in the neighborhood—from Slavs to Hispanics—which finds its reflection in the linguistic layer of the stories and construes translation as an inevitable element of urban experience.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Izabella Kimak, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin

Izabella Kimak is Assistant Professor at the Department of British and American Studies at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. Her research interests encompass contemporary American literature, with particular emphasis on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. She is Secretary General of the European Association for American Studies, a Kosciuszko Foundation fellow, and a recipient of the National Science Centre, Poland research grant for the project Sweet Home Chicago: The Windy City and American Writers of Polish Descent.

References

Dobozy, Tamas. “Returning to Places of No Return in Stuart Dybek’s Short Stories.” Identity, Diaspora, and Return in American Literature, edited by Maria Antònia Oliver-Rotger, Routledge, 2014, pp. 189–205.
Google Scholar

Dybek, Stuart. Childhood and Other Neighborhoods: Stories. U of Chicago P, 1980.
Google Scholar

Dybek, Stuart. I Sailed with Magellan. Picador, 2003.
Google Scholar

Dybek, Stuart. The Coast of Chicago. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.
Google Scholar

Fisher, Alison. “The Contextual Megastructure: Design after Urban Renewal.” The City Lost & Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960–1980, edited by Katherine A. Bussard, Alison Fisher, and Greg Foster-Rice, Princeton University Art Museum, 2014, pp. 174–205.
Google Scholar

Galush, William J. “Polish Americans and Religion.” Polish Americans and Their History: Community, Culture, and Politics, edited by John J. Bukowczyk, U of Pittsburgh P, 1996, pp. 80–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5hjnfr.8
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5hjnfr.8

Galush, William J. “Religious Life.” The Polish American Encyclopedia, edited by James S. Pula, MacFarland, 2011, pp. 440–46.
Google Scholar

Gellman, Erik. “Pilsen.” The Encyclopedia of Chicago, edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff, U of Chicago P, 2004, p. 608.
Google Scholar

Gladsky, Thomas S. “Mr. Dybek’s Neighborhood: Toward a New Paradigm for Ethnic Literature.” The Polish Diaspora: Selected Essays from the Fiftieth Anniversary International Congress of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, edited by James S. Pula and M. B. Biskupski, East European Monographs, 1993, pp. 129–35.
Google Scholar

Gladsky, Thomas S. Princes, Peasants, and Other Polish Selves: Ethnicity in American Literature. U of Massachusetts P, 1992.
Google Scholar

Hirsch, Marianne. “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile.” Poetics Today, vol. 17, no. 4, 1996, pp. 659–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/1773218
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1773218

Kimak, Izabella. “You Are What You Eat: Narrating Ethnic Identity Through Food in Polish Chicagoan Writing.” Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 18, 2024, pp. 214–24.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7311/PJAS.18/2024.15

Kozaczka, Grażyna. “The Neighborhood of Memory: Stuart Dybek’s Chicago.” Polish American Studies, vol. 69, no. 2, Autumn 2012, pp. 45–57. https://doi.org/10.5406/poliamerstud.69.2.0045
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.5406/poliamerstud.69.2.0045

Kozaczka, Grażyna. “Writing Poland and America: Polish American Fiction in the Twenty-First Century.” Polish American Studies, vol. 73, no. 1, Spring 2016, pp. 69–82. https://doi.org/10.5406/poliamerstud.73.1.0069
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.5406/poliamerstud.73.1.0069

Mora-Torres, Juan. “Pilsen: A Mexican Global City in the Midwest.” Diálogo, vol. 9, no. 2, 2005, pp. 3–7.
Google Scholar

Pacyga, Dominic. Chicago: A Biography. U of Chicago P, 2011.
Google Scholar

Radzilowski, John, and Ann Hetzel Gunkel. Poles in Illinois. Southern Illinois UP, 2020.
Google Scholar

Rotella, Carlo. “‘As If to Say “Jeez!”’: Blight and Ecstasy in the Old Neighborhood.” U.S. Catholic Historian, vol. 22, no. 2, Spring 2004, pp. 1–11.
Google Scholar

Rotella, Carlo. “Literary Images of Chicago.” The Encyclopedia of Chicago, edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff, U of Chicago P, 2004, pp. 486–89.
Google Scholar

Rotella, Carlo. October Cities: The Redevelopment of Urban Literature. U of California P, 1998. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520920101
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520920101

Rotella, Carlo. “Stuart Dybek and the New Chicago’s Literature of Neighborhood.” Chicago: A Literary History, edited by Frederik Byrn Køhlert, Cambridge UP, 2021, pp. 400–13. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108763738.029
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108763738.029

Rotella, Carlo. “The Literature of Neighborhood.” The City in American Literature and Culture, edited by Kevin R. McNamara, Cambridge UP, 2021, pp. 57–69. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108895262.004
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108895262.004

Simon, Sherry. Cities in Translation: Intersections of Language and Memory. Routledge, 2012.
Google Scholar

Strauss, Darin. “What the Heart Wants.” The New York Times, 1 Aug. 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/books/review/ecstatic-cahoots-and-paper-lantern-by-stuart-dybek.html accessed 21 June 2025.
Google Scholar

Wirth-Nesher, Hana. City Codes: Reading the Modern Urban Novel. Cambridge UP, 1996.
Google Scholar