Vidmantė Jasukaitytė is a modern Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

n writer and signatory of the 1990 Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania

Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania

The Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania or Act of March 11 was an independence declaration by the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic adopted on March 11, 1990...

.

Biography

Jasukaitytė studied the Lithuanian language

Lithuanian language

Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...

 and literature

Lithuanian literature

Lithuanian literature concerns the art of written works compiled by Lithuanians throughout their history.-Latin language:A wealth of Lithuanian literature was written in Latin, the main scholarly language in the Middle Ages.-Lithuanian language:...

 at the University of Vilnius. Her creative work started with poetry. Her first poetry book Ugnis, kurią reikia pereiti (A Fire to be Crossed) earned her the Zigmas Gaidamavičius award for the best debut. Her second prose book Stebuklinga patvorių žolė (Miraculous Grass by the Fence) was translated into Spanish (La milagrosa hierba de la raíz amarga) and published in Madrid in 2002. The novel After Us There Is no Us, published in 45,000 copies and sold ut in several months, earned the Juozas Paukštelis

Juozas Paukštelis

Juozas Paukštelis born Juozas Ptašinskas was a Lithuanian author and translator. His works have been translated into Russian, Polish, and Kazakh....

 literary prize. She faced difficulties publishing some of her works due to Soviet censorship. Three theater plays and one movie were produced based on Jasukaitytė's works. After involvement in the independence movement, Jasukaitytė experienced spiritual crisis and did not publish for about ten years. After a long trip to Egypt Jasukaityte returned to literature.

Political activities

Jasukaitytė joined the pro-independence Sąjūdis

Sajudis

Sąjūdis initially known as the Reform Movement of Lithuania, is the political organization which led the struggle for Lithuanian independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was established on June 3, 1988 and was led by Vytautas Landsbergis...

 movement. She founded and was elected chaiman of the Lithuanian Women's Union. The Union organized a social protest against Lithuanian men's service in the Soviet Army

Soviet Army

The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...

 where they often experienced various forms of humiliation. When the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...

 visited Lithuania, Jasukaitytė gave a speech, broadcasted over TV, accusing the Soviet military of mistreatment of their soldiers. After the controversial speech letters flooded her house and the Lithuanian Writer's Union. Jasukaitytė was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR

Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR

The Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR was the supreme soviet of the Lithuanian SSR, one of the republics comprising the Soviet Union. The Supreme Soviet was established in August 1940 when the People's Seimas declared itself the provisional Supreme Soviet...

 and became signatory of the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania

Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania

The Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania or Act of March 11 was an independence declaration by the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic adopted on March 11, 1990...

.

Works

• Fire to be Crossed (poetry, 1976)
• I‘m so Far Away (poetry, 1979)
• Miraculous Grass by the Fence (short stories, 1981)
• Man, my Brother (1982)
• Too Much Sun (poetry, 1986)
• Žemaitė (drama, 1986)
• Žilvinas (tragedy, 1988)
• After Us There Is No Us (novel, 1988)
• The Dove That Shall Wait (short stories, 1989)
• Grass Roots (screenplay, 1989)
• The Wolf Hunt (drama, 1990)
• Say Farewell to Unmined Silver (poetry, 1999)
• Golgotha's Grapes (essays, meditations, prayers, 2001)
• Mary the Egiptian (novel, 2002)
• The True Face of Nonexistence (poetry, 2002)
• Subačius Street. Ghetto (poetry, 2003)
• God Dies Alone (novel, 2003)
• Miraculous Grass by the Fence (2005)
• When We Were Wolves (novel, 2007)
• After Us There Is No Us (novel, 2005-2008)
• La loba (poetry, 2008)
• What After Nothing? (poetry, 2008)
• I Killed My Daughter (novel, 2008)

External links