Recommendations from the Kyiv Independent: ‘My Women’ by Yuliia Iliukha (Patreon)

Dear readers,

This is Lisha Shmidt, donations manager at the Kyiv Independent, and today I want to tell you about a book that broke my heart into a million pieces: “My Women” by Yuliia Iliukha. 

This book won BBC Book of the Year in 2024. At the award ceremony, Iliukha said: “I won with a book that I never wanted to write in my life, and I would have preferred to live my boring life in the Saltivka district of Kharkiv.” 

She wrote her first short story, about the fear of being killed while taking a bath, while she was sitting in her kitchen. She never thought a whole book would come out of it. After she posted the story on Facebook with the hashtag #mywoman, and it went viral, it became clear that many women had identified with her experience. 

Iliukha went on to publish “My Woman,” a collection of short stories about women and their lives during the war in Ukraine. When I read them, I too see myself in her stories. 

At first, like one of the characters, I was afraid to die from a missile attack naked in my bathroom. What will other people think? The poor rescuers who will find my body! I need to prepare and at least go to the gym! 

In her book, there are stories about the everyday: about manicures, haircuts, and ways of celebrating the small things. I remember buying Adidas sneakers and thinking that I would dance in them the day Russian President Vladimir Putin died. It is hard to accept, but they are almost worn out, and his death… still has not happened.

Then comes the hard part: women who have found themselves struggling with substance abuse and women who have watched their whole lives burn; women who kept going despite it all, and the women who took their lives because they could no longer go on; women who thought that Russia had brought freedom and found themselves captive and raped; women who sold their bodies to stay alive; and women who bought red lipstick and started doing their makeup every day, who wore the best lingerie while waiting in line for bread.

Women who survived and those who didn’t. 

And out of a million pieces of my shattered heart, I can now make a new mosaic. Thanks to Iliukha, I feel seen, understood, and part of a big organism that breathes and tries its best every day.

These stories will not only help to understand the struggles of Ukrainian women but also show how women share experiences the world over. And how, no matter the circumstances, women everywhere find the willpower to survive and keep going.