{"id":128267,"date":"2018-08-06T11:50:22","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T15:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=128267"},"modified":"2018-08-07T11:50:37","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T15:50:37","slug":"notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on the Death of Oxana Shachko"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

From Oxana Shachko\u2019s Instagram (@oksanashachko).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Oxana Shachko told me she preferred that spelling, with the x<\/em>, in 2016, as I was finalizing an essay that would describe, among other things, her life. In news articles about her, which have multiplied since her death by suicide in Paris this July, journalists more typically use the Romanization Oksana<\/em>. I will stick with the spelling she and I agreed on even though I knew Oxana, an artist who was thirty-one, to take things like this lightly, often changing her mind.<\/p>\n

My essay deals with the women\u2019s group Femen, which Oxana helped found in Ukraine. Beginning in 2008, it protested corruption in government; the conscription of Ukrainian women into sex work, which Oxana described as an issue of poverty, of globalization, even; and the failings of the hospital in Khmelnytskyi, of the Kiev Zoo. By 2013, the founding members all lived in exile. Oxana and another cofounder, Sasha Shevchenko, had fled to France, where they would become political refugees. The third, Anna Hutsol, went to Switzerland, where she was denied asylum. By the time I met Oxana in Paris, Femen had added activists internationally. The group had attracted attention in the West for its performative topless protests as well as for a certain overreach, taking on issues as far afield as the situation of women in Muslim countries. It would have surprised people I knew in Paris, where Femen was famous, that these women had begun with issues local to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

My memory is that Oxana left Femen in 2014 and that even then she showed ambivalence. (She\u2019d say, for example, that she affiliated not with Femen France but with Femen International.) In later accounts, the date moves up. A 2016 text published by a gallery says she left the group in 2013.<\/p>\n

I am wary of making too much of slippages like this, particularly in retrospect. Still, if Oxana\u2019s life did reshape itself on the many occasions she had to tell of it, her death has cluttered the truth further. Web searches turn up the work of artists less accomplished than she was, the photographers and filmmakers who shot her. If you didn\u2019t know her, you might struggle to identify the paintings that were hers. She was born in Khmelnytskyi, which is in western Ukraine, where at the exceptionally young age of eight she apprenticed herself to a Greek man who painted icons. A deeply religious child, she came to identify as an atheist, a materialist, a communist, and, at last, a feminist. In her late paintings, her technique with gold leaf, with the tempera she herself made out of egg yolk, translates into a political vernacular. Madonnas, haloed, wear niqabs. An archangel is gay, as denoted by a rainbow. Jesus and fishermen float in a comfortable boat as hands reach up from below them to break the waves. They are the hands of humans sinking, which the sanctimonious men ignore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

From Oxana Shachko\u2019s Instagram (@oksanashachko).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

She was generous, and she learned to relax into her beauty, a quality she hadn\u2019t always valued but that others liked. She allowed herself to be photographed, though the glamour shot was not natively her thing. A few of them she\u2019d reproduce on her own Instagram: from what seems to be a Russian fashion magazine, from the French photographer who staged her gazing back at him head-on, a bombshell. She did love to play dress up. In Ukraine, as the group\u2019s artist, she made its signs, masks, banners, costumes. In Alain Margot\u2019s documentary starring her, I Am Femen<\/em>,\u00a0which I watched with Oxana in the basement of the Centre Pompidou, Oxana lugs a ream of burlap someplace, pushes it against a snow bank, sets it afire, stamps out the fire, and turns to the camera with a big grin. \u201cHaute couture!\u201d she says. The scene, in which apparent violence resolves into a joke, represents her as I knew her. In a 2016 video by the German arts magazine 032c<\/em>, she is again herself, tossing her head and spinning in her chair. She\u2019s speaking in Russian, though I always associated her hyperactivity with her resourcefulness in communicating. She came to Paris with little French and learned it as she was learning English, so that as we spoke in English, she\u2019d repeat herself, offer French synonyms, emphasize things liberally, wave her arms demonstratively, and frequently slap her forehead. (\u201cJeune communiste, <\/em>you know? When you can\u2019t be communist because you are too young.\u201d) In the video, she discusses in voice-over her flight from Ukraine, where she faced charges of terrorism, and, grimly, the watering down of Femen in the West, where it came under the direction of the activist Inna Shevchenko (no relation to Sasha). Oxana brandishes a toy gun campily, pours out vodka, downs it, and wolfs shredded cabbage. Above her leans one of her icons, an archangel holding a Kalashnikov. She goes on to speak of her depression in France, and her double, the visual, lies supine in a froufrou dress, wearing tons of makeup, listlessly eating from candy necklaces she wears.<\/p>\n

In addition to Oxana\u2019s obvious beauty, the video shows her familiarity, her easy physicality. She had delicate, even babyish features, high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, little teeth. Given to work clothes that drowned her, she was by any measure extremely petite. This July, she managed, in a gray suburb south of Paris, to hang herself. I know those buildings. They are not cathedrals. She hanged herself in the wardrobe, according to Lib\u00e9ration\u2019s<\/em> quote<\/a> from Apolonia Sokol, a painter who was one of her best friends. Shortly before her death, Oxana made a post to Instagram that is, in my experience of her, uncharacteristically ugly. It is a painting, black-and-green capitals. YOU ARE FAKE<\/small>, it says\u2014Oxana said.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

I met Oxana when she was twenty-six and I was twenty-three. Today I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d have chosen Femen for a subject. From the start, I had a horror of the notion that I\u2019d wind up apologizing for the Islamophobia, or for the abolitionism vis-\u00e0-vis sex work, for which the group was, fairly or not, known. In 2013, I was conducting an open-ended project of reporting, in squats in Paris, on the occupation of buildings. That fall, a friend who was a housing-rights activist asked if I wanted to join him in opening a squat. I had travel plans for that weekend, and I changed them. He was liberating a vacant water-treatment facility in Clichy<\/a>, specifically to house the Femen activists who\u2019d recently arrived from Ukraine, though it would also take in squatters who were homeless for other reasons. I hadn\u2019t heard of Femen at the time. I found the activists on YouTube, doing militaristic push-ups. I met them on the night of October 31, which they may or may not have known was American Halloween, and helped them move boxes and furniture from the Lavoir Moderne, a theater in Paris\u2019s 18th arrondissement where they all then were staying, into a van. Oxana, a quick study, had better English than some of the other women, and she was my first friend. In that weekend\u2019s notebook, which includes a menu like a doodle\u2014\u201csardines on rice cakes, Nutella on rice cakes, coffee\u201d\u2014I find my note that Oxana called me, having temporarily absented the building, and hung up with the phrase \u201cSay hello to everyone,\u201d though we\u2019d all only just met, the h<\/em>\u00a0in her accent practically Hebraic. (I also took down her admonishment that I learn Russian so as to read the classics in the original, a task I still haven\u2019t gotten around to.) She was gracious in inhabiting these post hoc homes, which were half natural, full of light. They suited her informality, the breadth of her gestures, her basic forthrightness. In high school, she\u2019d left her parents\u2019 house to live in a cottage of clay that had been her grandfather\u2019s. It had no plumbing, and she fixed it up. Other squatters found furniture on the sidewalk; Oxana found, somehow, a juicer, and juice became her habit. The apartment in which she died was not a squat. It seems to have been a place she was renting outright, where she lived alone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

From\u00a0Oxana Shachko\u2019s Instagram (@oksanashachko).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 2014, after a disagreement with the new French Femen\u2014who, at the squat, broke down Oxana\u2019s bedroom door\u2014she moved back into the Lavoir Moderne, which was by then resisting its own eviction. She thundered downstairs to meet me, smock and jeans blotched with paint, hair stuck with pencils. Two weeks earlier, a man had interrupted a performance<\/a> at the theater, yelling about Femen. (It was well known in France that they\u2019d all lived there.) He knifed two spectators. Oxana and Apolonia, who was living there, too, had unusually and only by chance locked the door to their living quarters. Oxana showed me where among the theater\u2019s balding seats the man had stood. The hero of the night was a guy who\u2019d been loitering outside and confronted the attacker, which the police who interviewed Oxana could not understand. Their hypocrisy was, for her, the point of interest. They had failed to believe her because the man looked like any other in the streets of the Goutte d\u2019Or, a French African neighborhood. The racism of the police was, for Oxana, a form of hypocrisy. Fakery entailed all that, in her view.<\/p>\n

In September of last year, Oxana and Sasha appeared on a book cover. Per Olivier Goujon\u2019s Trahison <\/em>(Betrayal), which I haven\u2019t read, Inna, who got to France first, took all credit for Femen\u2019s success and led it dictatorially. This story, which Goujon touted as untold and authentic, had in fact already taken on dimensions in the French press as melodramatic as any of the tales it tells<\/a> about Femen. In 2014, L<\/em>\u2019Obs <\/em>reported<\/a> that Inna\u2019s father, a colonel, had poured ice water over her daily when she was a baby, with the intention of hardening her. I\u2019m not on Inna\u2019s side. My friends were Oxana, Sasha, and their friend Yana Zhdanova, all of whom publicly disaffiliated from her group. Still, I dislike how the story seats evil in Inna. In my observation, there were others to blame for shifts in the Femen agenda, for its loss of focus, like the ex\u2013Charlie Hebdo <\/em>polemicist Caroline Fourest, who\u2019s often accused of Islamophobia and who wrote adoringly about Inna as the group\u2019s leader. Inna has gone on to lecture against religion in the way that serves those Western Europeans who apply their principle of secularism to Islam with disproportionate stringency and who bait anti-immigrant sentiment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

One of Oxana Shachko\u2019s paintings (from her Instagram, @oksanashachko).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Despite these personal and ideological conflicts, Oxana described the Femen schism in aesthetic terms, which for her could describe anything. She called Inna and her followers in France too \u201cfashion,\u201d too \u201cfake.\u201d \u201cThey copied the protest,\u201d she told me in 2016. \u201cThey write the slogans on the breasts, but it\u2019s without sarcasm. Our actions were very dangerous, very serious, but we always laugh. Like, why are we naked?\u201d The artistic differences between Oxana and Inna predated their time in France. In Femen, <\/em>Galia Ackerman\u2019s 2013 biography of the group, Inna insists that what they do is not art. It seems she thought that Femen would be taken more, not less, seriously if they pretended their breasts were literal weapons. Oxana\u2019s response, for its humility and clarity, bears reproduction. It presages a preoccupation she shared with me in Paris about real art, as compared with fakes.<\/p>\n

Are we creating art? One year ago, we were still having quite a few arguments over this. The girls accused me of having said in an interview that we were artists. I defended my point of view. I think that true artists\u2014I\u2019m not talking of artists daubing canvases and then selling them as merchandise\u2014are not passive figures. The main task of art is revolution. We call for a revolution: one person will use music, another painting, another her own body. An artist is always a revolutionary. I hope this is true in my case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact, there was humor in the France protests, but unlike with the Ukraine protests, the women did not control it. It was the relative ridiculousness of their nudity in the West, where the stakes of the war they claimed to wage on dictatorship appeared, at least during the Obama years, low. It was also the dark irony that befalls people we name in terms of movement\u2014migrants, drifters, travelers, the stateless\u2014but whom laws and rules confine more completely than they do any other subject. Oxana had to skip an important Femen happening in order to keep an appointment with Immigration.<\/p>\n

In the worn cold loft of the Lavoir, its mold-black windows letting in birdsong, Oxana told me how hard it was, in art, to make something simple. I had been silent, murmuring, for most of the portion of interview I\u2019d taped. But at that I became enthusiastic, replying ingenuously\u2014I find it embarrassing to listen to myself\u2014that it was the same with writing. \u201cYou work and work to say something clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

An explanation Oxana once gave for the group\u2019s toplessness was the only one I ever understood: \u201cNudity was an allusion to our poverty.\u201d The documentary I Am Femen, <\/em>which covers the years before Oxana\u2019s arrival in Paris, shows her after she allegedly was beaten by Belarusian secret police, having protested that country\u2019s government outside KGB offices in Minsk, and after she broke both forearms jumping from a wall, convinced the men following her were the Ukrainian state\u2019s own thugs. Even so, she is never so upset as when relating that in jail in Moscow, she was told her one phone call had to be local. She couldn\u2019t call her mother. Her mother is interviewed, too, put out but doing a favor. With an air of obligation, she tells the filmmaker that her daughter is like Joan of Arc. \u201cI<\/em> couldn\u2019t do it,\u201d she says then, gushing. \u201cAll I can do is knit.\u201d She giggles as suddenly as Oxana sometimes did. \u201cAll I can do is love her. I can only give her my love.\u201d Oxana\u2019s father suffered from alcoholism; her mother speaks of Oxana as a \u201cman\u201d who customarily consoled her. Oxana is shown on the train, unwrapping home-cooked food with which her mother has saddled her, comic in its sheer quantity. In the 2016 interview, 032c<\/em> asks Oxana if she feels at home in Paris and she draws a contrast between home, which she understood in terms of her mother, and freedom. To me, she said she hoped it was not paranoia, but she believed she\u2019d be in real danger if she returned to Ukraine as an activist. Ultimately, as a political refugee, she could not go home. Her Instagram, with its fashion photos, begins as this status is officialized, her first post the French document for which she had waited. \u201cI say it\u00a0is only possible to feel at home at your mother\u2019s home,\u201d Oxana tells\u00a0032c<\/em><\/a>, in the magazine\u2019s translation, \u201cso\u00a0for me, it is more important to feel myself free.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Is it ethical to write about a suicide framed, by Oxana\u2019s Instagram post, as martyrdom? Wondering about this, I get up from my computer. I haven\u2019t been outside. I go out to get my laundry, and the clouds are pink and gold, like a tint of hers.<\/p>\n

I last saw Oxana in March of last year. I met her and Yana at an exhibit in the 8th arrondissement, where all the caf\u00e9s are boring, expensive, but we wanted at least to sit outside. We found a terrace on the main road, below a monument that may have been the Chapelle Expiatoire. It was lit up, and we sat in its glow. Oxana had come straight from Brussels, where she\u2019d exhibited her paintings. She was dragging a cloth shopping trolley, her luggage. As I recall, she merrily pronounced herself so disheveled that we\u2019d all be kicked out, and Yana instead went inside for menus. We got glasses of wine. We couldn\u2019t stay late. I forget why. I, for one, was jet-lagged and glad I could tell Oxana I\u2019d stayed up till seven or eight that morning writing, enjoying the freedom of displacement in time. It was easy for us to laugh at each other. She didn\u2019t have the paintings. She\u2019d left them in Brussels\u2014she\u2019d had to, for another time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Self-portrait from Oxana Shachko\u2019s Instagram (@oksanashachko).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Where are her paintings? Which fake will acquire them? She chose to die in the wardrobe. Her body was clothing that no longer fit, something dirty she stepped out of. I revisit her critique of the France protests: too obvious, too humorless, \u201ceven ugly,\u201d lourd<\/em>, dure<\/em>. I want now to throw it in her face, which isn\u2019t there. As a performance of my anger, this lacks for audience\u2014like YOU ARE FAKE<\/small>, its YOU<\/small> left vague. To say that Oxana\u2019s last Instagram post did no honor to her thinking around authenticity would be to miss the point. Let me return to a discussion of her life.<\/p>\n

When, at the Lavoir, I suggested to Oxana that imagining a new society was a creative process, she said: \u201cFor three years, I write the slogans on the body of the girls.\u201d I replay I Am Femen, <\/em>fascinated by the footage filmed before I knew any of them, before their exile. Oxana is survived by Yana, who was prosecuted for exhibitionism in France after a topless protest; by Sasha, who became a mother; by Anna Hutsol, among others; and by Inna. In I Am Femen, <\/em>Oxana surprises some of these women. In Ukraine, she\u2019d habitually skipped functions, telling the others she had nothing to wear. The camera reveals her in a pink dress, enormous fedora, and six-inch heels, the stickers still on, falling all over. The others, at the buffet table, lose it. Inna bends to kiss Oxana\u2019s hand and laughs into it. In contrast to many Femen protests, there is, I think, something like a play on gender in Oxana\u2019s drag performance. It is directed, with perfect sureness, at her friends.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Jacqueline Feldman is a writer living in New York. Her essays appear in <\/i>Real Life,<\/em> The White Review,<\/em>\u00a0and elsewhere.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Oxana Shachko told me she preferred that spelling, with the x, in 2016, as I was finalizing an essay that would describe, among other things, her life. In news articles about her, which have multiplied since her death by suicide in Paris this July, journalists more typically use the Romanization Oksana. I will stick […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1338,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[34955,34953,34958,34954,34957,34956,34952,34951,34959,3045],"class_list":["post-128267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-alain-margot","tag-femen","tag-galia-ackerman","tag-i-am-femen","tag-inna-shevchenko","tag-lavoir-moderne","tag-oksana-shachko","tag-oxana-shachko","tag-sasha-shevchenko","tag-ukraine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNotes on the Death of Oxana Shachko<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Is it ethical to write about a suicide framed, by Oxana\u2019s Instagram post, as martyrdom?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Notes on the Death of Oxana Shachko by Jacqueline Feldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 6, 2018 \u2013   Oxana Shachko told me she preferred that spelling, with the x, in 2016, as I was finalizing an essay that would describe, among other things, her\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-08-06T15:50:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-08-07T15:50:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/17438454_284325868669819_7311712609147813888_n.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"802\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jacqueline Feldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jacqueline Feldman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"16 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jacqueline Feldman\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/c071e412d9b9ac77ff2c3a0771de7075\"},\"headline\":\"Notes on the Death of Oxana Shachko\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-08-06T15:50:22+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-08-07T15:50:37+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/\"},\"wordCount\":3156,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/17438454_284325868669819_7311712609147813888_n-1024x760.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Alain Margot\",\"Femen\",\"Galia Ackerman\",\"I Am Femen\",\"Inna Shevchenko\",\"Lavoir Moderne\",\"Oksana Shachko\",\"Oxana Shachko\",\"Sasha Shevchenko\",\"Ukraine\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/\",\"name\":\"Notes on the Death of Oxana Shachko\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/17438454_284325868669819_7311712609147813888_n-1024x760.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-08-06T15:50:22+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-08-07T15:50:37+00:00\",\"description\":\"Is it ethical to write about a suicide framed, by Oxana\u2019s Instagram post, as martyrdom?\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/17438454_284325868669819_7311712609147813888_n.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/17438454_284325868669819_7311712609147813888_n.jpg\",\"width\":1080,\"height\":802,\"caption\":\"From Oxana's instagram @oksanashachko\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Notes on the Death of Oxana Shachko\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/c071e412d9b9ac77ff2c3a0771de7075\",\"name\":\"Jacqueline Feldman\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d3321073dbb4f9698a3aa7f46f5e6f8f4a29e68e6bbbb37ad4f289574d40af02?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d3321073dbb4f9698a3aa7f46f5e6f8f4a29e68e6bbbb37ad4f289574d40af02?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Jacqueline Feldman\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/jfeldman2\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Notes on the Death of Oxana Shachko","description":"Is it ethical to write about a suicide framed, by Oxana\u2019s Instagram post, as martyrdom?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Notes on the Death of Oxana Shachko by Jacqueline Feldman","og_description":"August 6, 2018 \u2013   Oxana Shachko told me she preferred that spelling, with the x, in 2016, as I was finalizing an essay that would describe, among other things, her","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2018-08-06T15:50:22+00:00","article_modified_time":"2018-08-07T15:50:37+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1080,"height":802,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/17438454_284325868669819_7311712609147813888_n.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Jacqueline Feldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Jacqueline Feldman","Est. reading time":"16 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/"},"author":{"name":"Jacqueline Feldman","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/c071e412d9b9ac77ff2c3a0771de7075"},"headline":"Notes on the Death of Oxana Shachko","datePublished":"2018-08-06T15:50:22+00:00","dateModified":"2018-08-07T15:50:37+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/"},"wordCount":3156,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/17438454_284325868669819_7311712609147813888_n-1024x760.jpg","keywords":["Alain Margot","Femen","Galia Ackerman","I Am Femen","Inna Shevchenko","Lavoir Moderne","Oksana Shachko","Oxana Shachko","Sasha Shevchenko","Ukraine"],"articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/","name":"Notes on the Death of Oxana Shachko","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/17438454_284325868669819_7311712609147813888_n-1024x760.jpg","datePublished":"2018-08-06T15:50:22+00:00","dateModified":"2018-08-07T15:50:37+00:00","description":"Is it ethical to write about a suicide framed, by Oxana\u2019s Instagram post, as martyrdom?","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/17438454_284325868669819_7311712609147813888_n.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/17438454_284325868669819_7311712609147813888_n.jpg","width":1080,"height":802,"caption":"From Oxana's instagram @oksanashachko"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/06\/notes-on-the-death-of-oxana-shachko\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Notes on the Death of Oxana Shachko"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/c071e412d9b9ac77ff2c3a0771de7075","name":"Jacqueline Feldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d3321073dbb4f9698a3aa7f46f5e6f8f4a29e68e6bbbb37ad4f289574d40af02?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d3321073dbb4f9698a3aa7f46f5e6f8f4a29e68e6bbbb37ad4f289574d40af02?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Jacqueline Feldman"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/jfeldman2\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1338"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128267"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128351,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128267\/revisions\/128351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}