A children's book about other children who lived in absurd times. A visual haiku about the dark past and those who withstood abuse, always searching for the light. The graphic novel "Siberian Haiku", created by Jurga Vile and Lina Itagaki, is about beauty, kindness and survival, despite the horrors of reality. The book was inspired by the true life story of writer Jurga Vile's father, who was deported to Siberia with his family by the Soviet regime.
”It’s not easy to find the way to talk to children, to draw their attention, so that they trust you, so that the interest doesn’t disappear after reading a few pages and even when they close the book. I like to search for a right way to talk to children about any subject. I also like to leave some secrets, not to reveal or explain all”, says Jurga.
Jurga Vile is a writer, translator and screenwriter from Lithuania. Lina Itagaki is an illustrator and designer from Lithuania. Siberian Haiku was their first book. We talk to Jurga and Lina about their journey to writing this graphic novel, their artistic meeting and how they created "Siberian Haiku" together.
Main chapters
Jurga: I grew up in Vilnius, spending lots of time in the streets of the old town. After school I studied French Philology at Vilnius University and then cinema and audiovisual medias at Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. I got specialized in archiving and film restauration. Languages and cinema, words and images are always very important to me. I spent a couple of years in New York, volunteering at the Anthology Film Archives and when I came back home I worked as a script girl on different film productions.
I was and I still am working as a translator, mainly from French language. I started writing for cultural magazines and working as a coordinator at film festivals. When my son was born we started travelling in winter time, when my daughter was born we moved to Andalusia, where we lived during seven years and where I actually wrote “Siberian haiku”. I wrote other texts before, but this one was the first to be published.
Lina: Chapter 1: pagan/Indian/Indiana Jones. When I was a teenager, I think, I really loved reading Lithuanian fairy tales, books about Lithuanian pagan religion and about American Indians. I loved spending summer in nature and was playing games there pretending I am a pagan priestess or an indian. I also loved watching movies about Indiana Jones – I was hoping one day I can also travel and have many adventures and a nice travel diary. About 2 year before finishing high school I decided I will study archeology – this way I can study something past related, have a sense of discovery, adventure and maybe travel to the US, I thought. But my plans changed when at the university I was told that archeology is a male profession and females are not welcome.
Chapter 2: Japan. At that time I also started going to Karate club, learning Japanese alphabet katakana and little by little got interested in Japan. In 1997 I entered a university and started studying English language and literature (because it was the easiest subject for me to take and exam and enter the university) so that as an additional language I could study Japanese (there was no Japanese language major at that time). I studied Japanese language very hard and in 1999 I got a scholarship to go to study in Japan for a year. But I stayed there for 6 years. While studying at the International Christian University in Tokyo I got interested in IT business, economics, marketing and started studying that. After graduation I lived for another 2 years and came back to Lithuania
Chapter 3: Drawing. In Lithunania I started working as a manager and Japanese language translator at the Lithuanian branch office of the Japanese video games TECMO KOEI company in Vilnius. Everyone else except me were artists with the best drawing skills. So suddenly I had a wish to learn to draw. For about 4 years while I was working at that company in the evenings I was taking private drawing classes while one day I decided to try how good I am – I took entrance exams at the Vilnius Art Academy, Graphics department, and I was accepted! For half a year I was struggling between fulltime work and studies, not knowing what to do, luckily for me the Japanese company decided to close our office and I became a student again. I was 30 years old at that time.
Chapter 4: Becoming an illustrator. While studying I understood that I like to draw illustrations and comics. After graduation I was drawing, putting my work online and hoping somebody will offer me to illustrate a book. After 2 years I received the offer and it was Siberian Haiku. After this book was published I started receiving offers to draw other books based on real history or biographies, so I became a history illustrator (not that I like it).
Chapter 5: Illustrator-publisher. After illustrating 7 books, that were very successful, I decided why not publish my books myself. Together with the writer Marius Marcinkevičius we started our own publishing house Mister Pinkman. We have published 8 books since 2022. I illustrated one of them, I do design for all our books, marketing, accounting, selling, distributing, packing, signing and sending, so I am as busy as never in my life now.
The story behind the book "Siberian Haiku"
Jurga: When Lithuania restored it’s Independence in 1990, the deportees who remained silent about their tragic experience in Siberia for a long time, could finally could share their memories. A lot of books were published then. I read almost all of them, as my dad had accumulated a real collection. All this literature of exile was very painful, like an open wound exposed to others. My dad‘s mom, my grandmother wrote a tiny notebook which I found unique. She was talking a lot about the beauty of the nature in Siberia and about the goodness of local people who helped them to survive. She would say just a few words about really hard moments or deaths. This notebook was never published, but it gave me the idea to write a book, telling my family’s story. It also inspired me to search for the light in the darkness. I carried this project with me for quite a long time before it saw the day.
The journey from the initial idea to the book
Jurga: At the beginning I only wanted to write just about the Orphan Train, about the return of children in that train. About my dad’s and his sister’s return to Lithuania alone, having to leave their mom in exile. Their dad was already killed in the labour camp. The second stage came when I was trying to enter a script writing school in Paris and I wrote some episodes for a film about the deportation of my dad. The commission was really impressed by it. Later I came back to the idea of writing a book.
But the concept was changing all the time. Till I started discussing this theme with my kids. I felt that they are miles away from the subject. Then I understood that I wanted to write a book addressing young readers. At first I wrote it as a comic book, but when Lina started illustrating it, we understood it was becoming huge, so I changed quite a lot of dialogues to text blocks and it became a graphic novel.
How did you decide to work together
Jurga: We didn’t know each other before. When I finished writing the text, together with the publisher we were searching for an illustrator. We found a Lithuanian artist with a Japanese name on the internet and that was Lina Itagaki. As there’s a Japanese line in the book, we thought that was a nice coincidence. We met with Lina just for a quick coffee, we told her what the book is about and she agreed to illustrate it at once. Then I left for Spain and Lina went to Klaipėda, our port, where she lived at that time.
We were communicating over the internet for nine months. When the book was published we met for its launch. Then it became successful, so we both moved back to Vilnius and new adventures began. At the beginning we thought we would continue to work together, but then we both were taken up by different projects and we never found time for contributing. But sometimes we still travel together with “Siberian haiku” and we share our creative ideas.
The challenges
Jurga: There was a happy start, because the publishing house was interested in this book before it was written, I told them about it and then I wrote a kind of synopsis. And they believed in me and gave me time to work. Still at some point I was stuck. There were a lot of things I wanted to put in the book, but I enjoyed paying attention to small details and I was afraid not to be able to connect all this into a story. I was told that my dramaturgy was reather weak, I had to think about culmination and other narrative moments. And still I imagined the story like a collar of glimpses, of feelings, of threads I had to knit.
I liked it being not very coherent, I liked its originality. So I wrote little and big events on sheets of paper and it was like a storyboard or like a long train with white wagons… and I managed to connect them, but of course it had to be illustrated and I saw all this world quite surrealistic. Very dreamy, wrapped in the fog. And Lina started drawing a realistic world, using photos to create authentic images. I didn’t know how to react, but very soon I felt that I didn't have to interfere. I felt that she was very much in the story and that she believed in what she was doing. It was very important for me.
Lina: For me the most difficult part with Siberian Haiku (and other graphic novels based on history) is that it is necessary to collect a lot of data, old photos how everything looked at that time – how people dressed, houses, interior, and especially all the things in Siberia where I have never been. We were interacting with Jurga through a messenger every day looking for material and deciding what would look how. Jurga had to ask her father to draw the inside of the cattle wagons because we did not find photos.
Also I had to look at so many sad, horrible photos from the war, digest them and turn them into light, not depressing illustrations. It was very hard psychologically. And also physically, because there was very little time.
What makes children's literature special
Jurga: It’s not easy to find the way to talk to children, to draw their attention, so that they trust you, so that the interest doesn’t disappear after reading a few pages and even when they close the book. So that the book doesn’t evaporate from their thoughts, but stays with them for a longer time. I like to search for a right way to talk to children about any subject. I also like to leave some secrets, not to reveal or explain them all. I always search for a special book myself. It can be a book for children or for adults.
All adults are children, children are not yet adults. I always think of this when I write. There are themes that are sensitive to all, others just for some that had similar experiences. I like to treat universal subjects that would speak to any age, in any part of the world. But sometimes I pay attention to a rather unique situation, it can be miniscule, like a drop in the sea, but I want to tell people about it.
The language of love
Jurga: It’s quite a big and heavy book, but there’s not a lot of text in it. So I would like it to be eloquent. To say something deep with a few words. I’m happy that the translations to other languages work as well. The main message is transmitted. The one about humanity. No matter when, no matter where. It talks to us in the language of love, of compassion, it tells us how to remain strong in difficult situations, how to survive.
The main character Algis is my dad when he was a little boy (in reality even younger than in the book). He’s 85 years old now. And he cries when he witnesses that the deportations are still happening today. I would like us to learn History lessons. But I also would like to continue telling personal stories, they are all important and all these drops fall into this big human sea.
How did you feel after it was published
Jurga: It’s my first book which was published. I felt so grateful. I didn’t ask for more. I was happy to give it to my dad, to see him being proud of me. While writing the book we became very close, like when I was a kid. So that was already a huge gift for me, for us. And then a recognition came. Nominations, prizes, translations, invitations, journeys… We were overwhelmed, but we took it not only as a fun occupation, but as a duty. To meet our readers, to reflect with them.
Lina: It was the most special moment! The first book!! However, as it was the first book published, I was very sensitive that colors in the book do not look like as they looked on the computer screen (now I know they never do). But we were really overjoyed. Very very happy.
The first books you read
Jurga: In my childhood I read a lot of books. I liked the books about nature, true stories about animals, I read a lot about snakes, as I was very much afraid of them. I loved Astrid Lindgren’s books. I felt at home in her fiction. I was reading fairy tales of foreign countries. I liked short stories and detective stories. Then I got interested in adventure and travelling, in Dumas’, Jules Verne’s, Karl May’s novels.
Lina: Hmmm I do not remember… I remember what I was reading myself when I was older. As I already wrote in the 1st question, I liked fairy tales and books about American Indians. My favourite series that I read many times was “The Sons of the Great Bear” by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich.
