Belokranjka Katka Zupančič was a Slovene-American poet, author and teacher. Primarily a Slovene children's writer, much of her poetry conveys a child's impression of major events, and her stories explore the difficulties of immigrant life and women's status. Her works of prose examine characters' psychology and social issues of the time, placing women, often with emotional distress, in the roles of protagonists. Zupančič was an educator in Slovenian schools. She married in 1920 and followed her husband to the United States three years later. In Chicago, she worked with Yugoslav and Slovene cultural organizations. She died at age 77 in Los Gatos, California, where she had moved four years before.
Biography
On September 17, 1889, Zupančič was born in Grič pri Dobličah to Katarina and farmer Janez Vrtačič. She had a brother named Mateta. She went to elementary school in Mavrlen, a nun school in Šmihel pri Novem Mestu and from 1907 to 1911 a teacher's college in Gorizia. She began teaching at a school in Šmihel pri Novem Mestu at the end of 1911 but became ill and returned home from November 1911 to February 1913. She then taught at various schools in Slovenia from 1913 to 1923, the last of which was the German Schulwereen School in Mavrlen where she was the first Slovenian teacher. While there she met Jakob Zupančič, and they married in 1920. She followed her husband to the United States in 1923, settling in Chicago, where Jakob had immigrated the year before. She soon began working with cultural and worker's groups, and her first written works were published in 1929. She contributed articles and poems to the children's magazine Mladinski list, for which she was the editor from 1918 to 1926, and worked with the Slovene National Benefit Society, teaching at the Pioneer 559 lodge and directing plays, some of which she wrote, with the Yugoslav Socialist Association in Chicago. Her works were also published in Majski glas, Ameriški družinski koledar, Prosveta, Proletarec and Cankarjev glasnik. In 1963, she moved to Los Gatos, California, where she lived until her death on September 8, 1967, a week before her 78th birthday. She was interred in Los Gatos Memorial Park. Her husband Jakob died in 1980 at age 84.
Literary work
Poetry
Zupančič was best known for her children's poetry which she also illustrated. Writing in Slovene, she used simple language and evoked the austerity of immigrant life tempered by humor and from a child's point of view. Her poetry uses a refined approach depicting the state of common people, much like other American Slovene poets, though framed not through realistic depiction of events but using an affecting, subjective perspective. She used the traditional ballad form with irregular rhythm, rhyme and line length. Her work dealt with dark aspects of American life and tactfully showed her disappointment with the American Dream. Zupančič's poems are about the emotional toll of modern events—the Great Depression and men's shame over losing their jobs; the tragedies of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War begetting homelessness, starvation and fratricide; and the plights of women and children without love.
Prose
Most of Zupančič's stories, like her poetry, are written for children, though some deal with social topics that are more mature. Unlike some works of prose written by immigrants, her writing lifts women's role to that of the protagonist and fleshes out characters' psychological motivation. Many protagonists in her stories have in some way been abused or humiliated, thereby having emotional damage. The author's word choice is specific and pathetic, often with dark humor. Her stories are lengthy and characterized by fast pace, familiar idioms, biblical allusions and bitterness, particularly in connection to women's lowly status. Most of her stories are set in Slovenia, especially those that deal with cruelty to women, violence which Zupančič suggested was almost expected in lower-class families. Some Zupančič short stories, like much immigrant literature of the time, criticize conditions in the United States—she comments on bankers causing the Depression, economic collapse destroying families and a perceived hypocrisy among the clergy. Other stories show the lasting consequences of apparently trivial actions. Her story "Dota" critiques fathers who act as autocrats holding their daughters' feelings in disregard: a young woman is forced to marry a greedy man who swindles his way into getting a large dowry in compensation for her ugliness. When they return from the wedding, the bride's shepherd is startled and frightens the horses pulling the couple's sleigh. They tear off the road and the bride, though smiling, is found dead in the snow. This theme is shared by her story "Žensko dete", where the title character confesses the rejection she and her sister feel from their father because of their gender.
