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Abstract: Sociocultural ideas about the family in Russia reflect the traditional views on the role of older relatives in passing values on to younger generations. However, along with these ideas, there is also a question of the readiness of adolescents (representatives of the younger generation), to accept these values and their sense of belonging to their family. The article makes an attempt to analyze a work of modern Russian children’s and young adult literature – the novella “Superpowers by Inheritance: My Soviet Grandfathers” by O. Kolpakova – as a story that explores the relationships between different generations of a family. It realizes the archetypical plot of growing up of the young protagonist as a process of formation of the person’s family identity, as an understanding of their role as someone responsible for the life and stability of their family, acting as a keeper of its history and traditions. Drawing on the works of S. S. Strokova, the authors of the article present a model for describing the family identity of a teenage character, comprising the emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and value-based components and explore their realization in the text under study. The authors argue that Kolpakova’s artistic world is aimed at a comprehensive study and representation of the family as a microcosm and at creation of a context of a teenager’s perception of their family history as an integral part of the history of their Motherland. According to the authors of the article, the writer manages to present the family memory in the context of building identity via choosing a teenage protagonist as the focal character building an autobiographical narrative: the female main character explores herself through dialogue with others, continuously identifying herself with her multigenerational family members. The main character’s awareness of her connection to her family and pride in her ancestors come through her understanding of her correspondence to the family values. The writer successfully demonstrates the formation of the character’s family identity through various aspects of the story: the motif of name giving of relatives, the family traditions, the selection of events as “significant stages in the biography”, the demonstration of the features of the “grandfather’s language”, etc.

About the author(s) :

Zhanna K. Gaponova

Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University named after K. D. Ushinsky (Yaroslavl, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9248-226X

Elena V. Nikkareva

Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University named after K. D. Ushinsky (Yaroslavl, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0014-1404

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 09.01.2025; date of publication: 28.03.2025

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