The Struggle for Equality and Human Rights for Everyone

Stoyan Christowe is one of the top 5 American writers that were writing on English although English was not their mother tongue. When the president Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, on his desk was the book from this writer – “This is My Country”.

            Stoyan Christowe was born on 15^th of August 1897 in the village of Konomladi, in the region of Kostur, now Northern Greece, than Ottoman Empire. The extremepovertyprovoked him like many others from this region to go abroad. When he was just 14 he left to USA through the port of Napoli.

            In the new country he worked in the smelter of St Louis. Then he worked on the building of the railroad in the states of Montana and Wyoming. After he earned enough he went to Chicago where he attended the night school for English Language. After a few months he inscribed himself at the University of Valparaiso in Indiana. Followingthe 18 months of studyingStoyan Christowewent back to built that railroad in Montana. There he was working in a group with other Macedonians, and when he earned enough money to finance his studies he returned to the university. In this manner of working-studying-working he finally finished his studies in 1922. After this he began working as a journalist and editor of few newspapers in Chicago. During the period 1922-25 of his assignment on the position as an editor of the newspaper “House Organ” he obtained his American citizenship in 1924. Afterwards he started to work as a journalist for the Chicago “Daily News” where he attracted massive attention of the readers with his articles about the emigrants. He was particularly interested in his homeland so he started to work as a correspondent from the region of the BalkanPeninsula in the period of 1927-29. In the period 1929-41 he worked as a freelance writer in New York and then he moved to Vermont where he remained until the end of his life. He married with a woman that had native origin. His particular interest as a writer of the artistic literature was to depict the position of his enslaved nation- the Macedonians. Althoughhis prose has the darkness and the cruelty of the everyday struggle as its primer subject line, it is enormously enlightened with tremendous doses of optimism that is unusually immersed in the sea of human hopes. Amongst other respectable positions that he had in his homeland- USA,is that he was the governor of the state of Vermont, where in the city of Dower is built the monument in his honor. The struggle of Stoyan Christowe for equality and human rights for everyone is still quoted in many American academic researches. Macedonian Arts Council made a documentary about him – http://www.myamericanpilgrimagemovie.com/#trailer .

by Igor Pop Trajkov