Award-winning writer Inara Verzemnieks, left, with University of Guam President Thomas W. Krise

Inara Verzemnieks comes from a family displaced from their home country of Latvia by war and occupation. Because of the country’s turbulent history, the Latvian language now has two words to describe its people: one for Latvians who live in the country and one for those who have had to leave.

Her journey to discover her family’s identity after their exile resonated with an engaged audience who came to hear her speak on Feb. 12 at the 39^th installment of the Presidential Lecture Series.

“As the first generation born in the United States, I grew up inside my family’s longing for their lost home,” she said. They continued speaking the language, carrying out the traditions, and sharing their memories as though they might be able to go back one day, she said.

“Gradually, the stories of my family’s lost home became more real than the home we actually lived in,” she said, speaking of Tacoma, Washington, where the family ultimately settled after having been refugees for many years.

It took some time before she allowed herself to travel to Latvia to finally connect the place with her family's stories for fear that what she would find would not live up to the memories passed down to her.

 

“There’s an awful beauty to this moment — arriving finally at the scene of one’s past and discovering only ruin.”

 

“There’s an awful beauty to this moment — arriving finally at the scene of one’s past and discovering only ruin,” she said. “And yet ruin resists simple affirmation, forces us to place questions over certainties, to surrender what we had imagined had always existed, to ask instead, what if? … What if I had come here sooner? There would have been more for me to see, but there also would have been less for me to find.”

Verzemnieks is a former journalist, a 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing, and the author of her memoir, “Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe.” She teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa. She was in Guam as a featured author through Humanities Guåhan for a series of creative writing and journalism workshops and readings titled, “I Come From Here: Portraying Place, Community, and History.”

Watch Inara’s lecture here.

View photos from the lecture here.