When reality breaks into parts, islands, pieces – Yevgenia Beloruset's "Wartime Diary"

This article focuses on Yevgenia Belorusets’s War Diary, which she kept during the first 47 days of the Russian invasion on Ukraine in 2022. The diarist, a Ukrainian photographer, writer, and artist describes how the war affects every aspect of her life. She uses various strategies to distance herself from traumatic events happening all around her — events that evoke a range of emotions. This distancing is necessary to narrate her experience and appeal to international readers, as she strongly believes that her voice must be heard. In this article, I present the author, examine her diary as a text intended for publication, and consider how trauma shapes its content and structure.