DC Club: “War Boys: A Father and Son Memoir”

“War Boys: A Father and Son Memoir”

How a Winter Term Project Turned Into a 27-Year Artistic Endeavor

A Zoom Conversation with Author Jason Prokowiew '01

Moderated by Professor of Politics Stephen Crowley (Sponsor of the Winter Term Project)

Jason Prokowiew ’01 wrote War Boys: A Father and Son Memoir to understand his terrifying and abusive father. As a child, Jason, born thirty years after World War II, only knew his father as the screaming, drunken man who called Jason “fat” and “stupid.” Jason cowered in his suburban Boston bedroom as his father verbally abused his mother in the next room. Years later, impelled to confront the trauma of his childhood, Jason sat down to listen to stories of his father’s own trauma about the Nazis who murdered his family at the start of the war, and the German who adopted him. Using those interviews and extensive research, Jason retraced his father’s harrowing journey to understand how he survived the war and why he became the terrifying father Jason knew. In an era where generational estrangement is common, War Boys inspires with its account of father and son, both battle-scarred survivors, and how they healed their relationship through the power of claiming and telling their own stories – and listening to one another.

Stephen Crowley, Professor of Politics at Oberlin, will serve as moderator. Jason highlights the key role Stephen played in the development of the memoir:

“War Boys began for me in 1998 in a Russian politics course taught by Professor Steve Crowley. Steve showed us the Russian film Come and See, about the German invasion of Belarus in 1941. When the film’s protagonist returns to his village and finds it abandoned, buzzing with flies, it reminded me of a similar story my father told me about his own childhood, about returning to his Belarusian apartment to find it scorched, walls collapsed, surrounded by piles of dust. I found myself drawn to Steve’s office like a magnet, to tell him the film felt familiar, like a world my father knew. He asked a question I couldn’t answer: what happened to my father’s family?

“I used my first Winter Term to start recording with my father what would become fifty hours of interviews, which provided answers but even more questions. Turns out, my father didn’t know what happened to his mother and never would. After my father passed away in 2002, I conducted a research trip to Belarus, where I learned in the archives of my grandma’s fate: she was murdered by the Nazis on the second day of the invasion, targeted for her role in the Communist Party.

“Had I never watched Come and See, had I never gone to talk to Steve, had I never done that Winter Term project, War Boys might never have been, my relationship with my father may never have shifted as it did, and these stories may never have been told.”

Please join us to learn more about Jason’s journey and how he has come to terms with a difficult father-son relationship. Jason will come to Capitol Hill for a program at East City Bookshop on Thursday August 20, 2026, at 7 p.m. Here is a recent essay he wrote for People.

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Jason Prokowiew ’01 is a self-described “recovering attorney.” Jason worked for thirteen years as a disability attorney, before closing his law practice to focus full-time on his writing. Jason’s writing has appeared in Salon, The Guardian, The North American Review, Cognoscenti, Brevity, and in Roxane Gay’s Emerging Writer Series “The Audacity.” His memoir War Boys has garnered recognition and awards. At Oberlin, Jason majored in English. He earned an MFA from George Mason University and a law degree from the Massachusetts School of Law.