In this year's edition, the Competition Jury honoured the book entitled Pogranicze folkloru i kultury popularnej w wielkomiejskiej Łodzi. Od połowy XIX wieku do 1939 [Borderland of folklore and popular culture in the metropolitan city of Lodz. From the mid-19th century to 1939], edited by Dr Przemysław Owczarek and Krystyna Radziszewska.
The competition awards publications on the subject of Lodz, which stand out from the editorial and substantive point of view. As many as 114 publications have been submitted for this year's edition.
The awards gala was held on 27 May of the current year at the the Jozef Pilsudski Regional and Municipal Public Library in Lodz. The award was collected by the editors of the book – Prof. Krystyna Radziszewska and Dr Przemysław Owczarek as well as people involved in the creation of publications from the series "Kultura literacka Łodzi" [Literary Culture of Lodz] – Dr Karolina Kołodziej and Dr Katarzyna Badowska.
The publication was published in the "Kultura literacka Łodzi" series. It is a treasure trove of information about a city whose identity for decades was presented in one dimension – as a city in the shadow of chimneys, without culture. Publications from the series shatter this stereotype.
The book is devoted to the literary-popular culture developing in Lodz. In the first part, researchers describe areas of literary creativity rarely dealt with by literary or cultural scholars: songs functioning in the working-class environment; tabloid literature; popular humorous and satirical literature, of which Lodz became an important publishing centre in the interwar period. The second part is an anthology presenting the world of texts functioning in Lodz popular culture.
Joanna Sikorzanka writes more about the book as part of the blog of the Lodz University Press.
When authors wrote about Lodz, they focused on the industrial development of the "city of chimneys", on the workers' hardship and the manufacturers who profited from it. Some facts were kept silent because they were inconvenient and did not fit the current narrative. This was the case, for example, of the history of the Jews of Lodz. Only the 1990s brought a new perspective. People began to write about manufacturers in a different tone. It was recalled that 1/3 of the inhabitants of pre-war Lodz were Jews. Various texts showing the rich and diverse history of Lodz districts and the customs of their inhabitants were also reached. The old Lodz began to teem with life. It turned out to be multicoloured and extremely interesting.
The text is available in the blog (in Polish).