Elaine Rusinko has written an exhaustive biography of Andy Warhol’s mother, Julia Warhola, to counter commonly “bemused” or “derisive” western characterizations of her (x). The book chronicles Julia Warhola’s life and how Warhol himself “emerged from Carpatho-Rusyn working-class roots” (x). Carpatho-Rusyns (also known as Rusyns, Rusnaks, Carpatho-Russians, and Ruthenians) are a “stateless people, whose homeland today stretches across five European countries—Ukraine, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Poland” (xv). Though Rusinko claims that Julia’s own story is worth telling, each chapter culminates in how she offers us a “window into ‘the Rusyn Warhol’” (x).

The book is divided into a preface and eight chapters, following Julia’s life from her 1891 origins in Miková, in the Austro-Hungarian empire, through her emigration to Pittsburgh, her move to New York to live with Andy, and her return to Pittsburgh for her final year in 1972, always keeping in view the “inborn artistic sense that flowed from her Carpatho-Rusyn cultural background” that profoundly impacted her son (xi).

Julia Zavacka’s wedding to Andrii Warhola opens the first chapter, “My Town—Miková, Czechoslovakia.” A significant section describes the protracted nature of Carpatho-Rusyn weddings in general, standing in for the specifics of Julia’s wedding (3–9). This pattern, of relating Julia’s personal narrative in part through a more generalized history of Carpatho-Rusyn customs, repeats throughout the book. Similarly, Rusinko describes Carpatho-Rusyn traditions, shows how Julia continued them in the US, and then how they can be connected to Warhol’s artistic output, a strained pattern that also repeats throughout. For example, Rusinko states that “the wax-resist dying art” for pysanky or the painted eggs Julia made, “is similar in principle to the silkscreen technique that became Warhol’s trademark” (45). Each chapter has as its goal a demonstration of the extent to which Carpatho-Rusyn roots mattered for the artist Andy Warhol was to become.

The next six chapters follow Julia’s life chronologically, while the final chapter relates Andy Warhol’s afterlife as the most prominent of Carpatho-Rusyns. Chapter 2, “Then Everything Bad,” outlines Julia’s life in Miková, and details Andrii’s likely experiences in Pittsburgh through sociological information about Slavs working there in the early twentieth century (60–106). The third chapter, “Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” narrates Julia’s likely route following Andrii there in 1921, and what we know of her life in Pittsburgh (112–47). This chapter also describes the differences between the Greek Catholic Church that the Warholas belonged to and the Roman Catholic Church to show that the Warholas defined themselves as Carpatho-Rusyns, against the imposition of Ukrainian identity that is sometimes claimed for Warhol (147–51, 154). Chapter 4, “I Raise My Children Okay,” emphasizes the east European nature of Andy’s and his brothers’ upbringing. This chapter covers Andy’s life and art training and his move to New York to become a commercial artist (171–73, 236–40). Chapter 5, “To Come and Live with My Andy,” describes Julia’s experiences once she moved to New York to take care of Andy (243–44). This chapter relates how Julia came to do lettering for Andy’s commercial pieces in her distinctive, looping handwriting and contributed drawings to the limited edition promotional books he produced for clients from 1952–60 (257–72). Chapter 6, “My Beloved Sister,” covers Julia’s routines, the letters she wrote home, the visits she made to Pittsburgh, and the network of people she kept up with in Europe as well as the two-month visit her sister Eva made to New York in 1967 (347–53). Though Julia seemed like an east European peasant to many of Andy’s friends, she was American by comparison with her sister (353). Chapter 7, “Your Life Hangs By a Thread,” begins with Andy being shot by Valerie Solanas on June 3, 1968 and narrates his convalescence and his mother’s decline and death in 1972 (378). The final chapter, “A Simple Rusyn Woman,” describes the reclamation of Warhol for Rusyns in eastern Slovakia after his death in 1987 and the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. This chapter emphasizes the importance Andy’s mother is given in east European exhibitions devoted to Warhol’s work (421–22). In this context, Julia is celebrated almost as a saint while her representation in American popular culture tends to reduce her to a cliché of a nearly incoherent babushka (421, 423–24).

Ultimately, the book is an extended argument that Julia’s influence meant Andy Warhol “internalized and incorporated attitudes, values, and behaviors that had their source in Carpatho-Rusyn peasant culture” that was crucial for the “unique American style” he developed, “both in his art and in his life” (56).