GRANTEE
Donbas as Metaphor is an English-language edition of a book about the Donbas that reveals the region as central to understanding post-industrial landscapes and contemporary environmental trauma. Iakovlenko shows how the ancient Ukrainian steppe and decades of industrial extraction have shaped a fragile world of memory, community, and environmental loss. Drawing on Susan Sontag’s legacy, she dismantles harmful metaphors that have long distorted the perception of Donbas and obscured the lived experiences of its people. Blending documentary reportage, personal essay, and analytical reflection, the book offers a new language for confronting trauma, silence, and environmental decline. It ultimately builds a powerful bridge between Ukraine and global readers, presenting the Donbas region as a place of complex histories, human resilience, and urgent reimagining.