a book review of Building that Bright Future: Soviet Karelia in the Life Writing of Finnish North Americans by Samira Saramo

“‘Americans came here to eat our bread!’ clamored the new neighbors of North American settlers who immigrated to Karjala to be the ‘civilizers’ of its people and build a utopia for themselves in a new land (6, 23, 67, 122).

In reality, this settlement project brought about no utopia for anyone; eventually, persecuted settlers left Karjala with only heartaches to bring home, if they were not executed first (4, 12–14, 149, 152–53, 176, 186).”

“If materialized in full, the future that settlers envisioned would have required the increased marginalization and continued assimilation of Karjala’s Indigenous peoples: karjalazet and vepsläižed (29). Engaging with Saramo’s Building that Bright Future prompts readers to consider how we might instead imagine life-sustaining, abundant futures for all people—not only settlers and their states. We can—and for our collective futures, we must—construct worlds capacious enough to sustain the Indigenous peoples of Karjala, our lifeways, and our languages, rather than condemning us to live and die in the pages of history books. Saramo invites her readers to create ‘the brighter future we envision—even if it requires a sacrifice’ of what has made us comfortable (185). We can answer Saramo’s call by building spaces for and supporting the production of Indigenous Karelian life writing: authored by karjalazet, for karjalazet.”