Reactor

Dear Mr Todorovic,

I’m writing to send my most sincere thanks to you for your work. As a Canadian born Serb who deals with her own struggles within these two contexts, it was deeply gratifying to find your writing represents so eloquently Serbian experience abroad during the NATO bombing of 1999.

I don’t mean to take your time up with a long introduction, but I feel compelled to share a bit of my story by way of explanation of context. At the time of the bombing, I was a television producer. I worked very hard for the production of a documentary on the Serbian experience in the diaspora during the strike. My timing was off for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the concurrent production of “Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War.” My project was set aside, but my questions regarding media representation were not. The fact that I worked for an Aboriginal production company and would go on to do two documentaries on retention of cultural voice within this community did little to quell my politics. When I discovered that it was getting more difficult rather than less to bring attention to Balkan questions as they related to Canada, I went back to school. The great irony of this is that Lloyd Axworthy is the current president of the university that I am attending and where I am currently doing the work detailed below.

I am about to complete a second B.A. in International Development and am beginning my Masters in the Fall. The work I will be doing focuses on Serbian art in the diaspora. The broader context of the work, however, is intended to challenge the current development paradigm which is limited primarily to anthropological, economic, and political inquiry. My argument is that development as an endeavor is responsible for the inclusion of discourse analysis of the art of a culture as a means of learning the landscape of the people before engaging them in the development process (here conceived as participatory, people-centered development – not the development of the IMF and World Bank). As an academic, it is difficult for me to leave this statement as unadorned and brief as it is, but will only say, if you would like clarification on this point, let me know. Otherwise I won’t bore you with the details.

The key reason for writing you was to let you know that your work does not stop with your readers. I use your work liberally within my writing and it is being read and absorbed into the discourse of development within our program as a result. The ICJ ruling last week has only strengthened my work in the eyes of the program, and I am about to begin a paper analyzing your work as it reflects on the multi-cultural paradoxes of being a Serb in Canada, a Serb in the Balkans, and a Serb in the world. The work I’m currently engaged with will look at Serbian art writ large as it comments on representation of Serbs in the 90’s and the history of the Balkans as a whole. Artists who are central to this examination are, of course, Abramovic and Pavic, but I will also be looking at lesser known artists portrait artist Bojan Otasevic (Kragujevac). Your work, however, continues to serve as the anchor for my understanding of their works.

This, in the end, is why I felt compelled to write you. While one might argue that the undergraduate essays of a student from Winnipeg may mean little in the big scheme of things, the ripples are in effect, and your work has had an impact that extends far beyond your initial readership base or the work I myself am doing. It has already engaged students and professors alike with interests as diverse as India, South Africa and the Middle East. So, as a woman proud of her heritage, and proud of the works of the people from whom her father comes, I just wanted to write and say thank you, and congratulate you on your recent Writers Trust Award win. It is the first of many, I am sure.

Kind regards,
Milana

I finished reading your book this morning at 3am and have been sitting at my computer for the last few hours, attempting to compose my thoughts and emotions so that I may convey to you how your book has affected my being.

I am 2o years old, an offspring of a mixed marriage from Former Yugoslavia. My mother is a Serb who grew up in [name of the city], and my father is a Bosnian Muslim from [name of the city]. I was six years old, living in Sarajevo when the war broke out. After hiding in a basement for months, my mother packed few of our treasured belongings in a ratted suitcase, and fled via the back roads with me to Vojvodina, to my grandparents, at the time, having no choice but to leave my father behind. We stayed in [name of the city] for three years; in summer of 1995 we boarded a plane that would take us to [name of the city], Ontario, Canada.

My mother had arranged a visa for my father as well, but I suppose that the war, and my mother taking me to Serbia for safety’s sake left him with a feeling of betrayal and abandonment, which he has reciprocated for the last 14 years. I have not seen my father since that day we left Sarajevo, and have spoken to him a small number of times that I can count on my two hands (his choice, not mine).

Canada was a strange place for me. I was 9 years old, too young to understand the implications of the war and the situation my mother and I were in, but too old not to notice that life had changed. As I learned the languages (I went to a French school) and got older, I made Canadian friends. I soon learned that no friend of mine, nor an adult for that matter, was going to understand anything in regards to where I am from and what is going on there, so I simply never spoke to anyone about my home, my family, my old life that seemed so pleasant and vanished one day with a gunshot. At the time I didn’t understand it myself.

I soon became ashamed of my background, of my status in Canada, my broken family, and began repressing memories that I now struggle to recover. I hated answering the prying questions of my friends’ parents, and simply forced amnesia upon myself. I became the typical North American pre-teen, I watched MuchMusic for entertainment and begged my mother for McDonald’s Happy Meals. This is what I wanted, and I was proud that I could fit in so well among my schoolmates.

When I was in high school the war in Kosovo broke out, and again, I didn’t understand everything, but could easily see that Serbs were being demonized on the news. Since I grew up in a Serbian home, following all customs and traditions from the age of 6, I identified myself as Serbian, and took every harsh word against Serbs personally. This further encouraged me to avoid any conversations regarding the war and my experience. I didn’t want anyone thinking that I was one of those people CNN claims to be an ethnocentric murderer. In high school I had few friends from back home, and with them I felt like myself, but it wasn’t the same.

I often went back home with my mom and as I got older, I began to long ‘za Srpsku dusu’ ( I guess I could say ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, but it just doesn’t translate…yet another idiom). My first year of university my desire for understanding and acquainting myself with my former country and its people began to grow. I thought it best to accomplish this by reading, so I immersed myself in Serbian poetry and prose. I bought an English translation of Ivo Andric’s ‘Na Drini Cuprija’ and ‘Prokleta Avlija’ (though I can read and write both in the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, English reads quicker). I made my way through my mom’s books, and one day while surfing the Internet I came across Michael Parenti’s book ‘To Kill A Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia’, which shed a lot of light onto my rather ignorant views in regards to the war and media propaganda. I began to understand more and more that my friends’ and their parents’ ignorance was indoctrinated. My anger was subsiding. But I still felt alone.

I am now in my third year at the University of [name of the institution], doing an Honors Specialization in English Language and Literature with a minor in Latin; one day while searching for a new and interesting read in the university bookstore, I noticed the all-familiar ‘ic’ ending on one of the book spines. It was your book. I pulled it off the shelf, read the jacket, and felt skeptical. Up until then, by my own choice, I had never read nor heard anyone’s account of their experiences as Yugoslavia made its way towards extinction. I didn’t want to know that someone else was hurting the way my mother has silently suffered through the whole ordeal. I didn’t want the reality of it all. I didn’t buy your book that day, but often went back and looked at it. I did tell my mom about it, (she also refuses to read memoirs and accounts of the break-up of Yugoslavia) and she urged me to buy it for some reason.

The next few days I saw her spending every spare moment reading, laughing at times, crying at others. She told me she was happy she read it, and no longer felt alone. As I read the book, I began to understand more and more what my mom talks about when she has the courage to verbally recollect Yugoslavia, Tito, her friends and her youth. She has expressed a desire to contact you and thank you; perhaps she cannot find the words yet.

For me personally, your book has helped me to grow as an individual, to be proud of my roots. I now understand the joys and sorrows of the ex-Yugoslavs, and I love them all the more. I know that no matter how scattered we may be at the present time, just like the Bijelo Dugme song states, ‘ima neka tajna veza’. Forgive this long letter, it is the first time (perhaps not the last) that I have shared these words.

Thank you for writing this book, it has touched my soul so deeply. God bless you in your future endeavors.

Most sincerely,

Sandra

Hello,

I just put down The Book of Revenge about an hour ago and have been thinking about it ever since. I left Jugo when you did.. I.. well.. I just want to say thank you for the book, I guess you could say it hit home.

I have just finished reading your recent book “The Book of Revenge”. For the past 8 years I have worked with a CIDA program to teach Family Medicine in BiH. I’ve travelled around Bosnia and Croatia ( alas never got to Belgrade) and have always wished that I had seen Yugoslavia in the Tito era just to know how it really was.I started the book in a cafe in Banja Luka and the waiter there, a young fellow about 21 asked me what I was reading. I told him what I knew of the book and the author from the flyleaf. He said ” I don’t want to spoil it for you but I know he would have left because of the communist system. There is no hope here. Even I have Yugonostalgia and I wasn’t even born yet! My uncle lives in Winnipeg and I hope some day I can go there.”

I’ve been to Lopud, eaten Tufahija, listened to Azra and know people with all the first names of those in your book. To read it opened for me an intelligent picture of what things were like prija rata.

Thanks for this insight.

Now that I have found your web site, I’ll explore more.

John Geddes MD. Kingston, Ontario.

PS. How are you now???

I came back to the article published in Globe and Mail by David Rieff and came to conclusion that although I wrote the following words “hot-headed” irritated by the disqualifiying tone that came out of the review, my comment still addresses main problem of the Rieff’s argument who sees Todorovic’s stance on Yugoslavia as an “exercise in the more moderate version of that same nationalism. It is the lament of the Belgrade liberal, circa 1994 …”

Well if that is true for Todorovic, much of this applies to Rieff :

David Rieff’s article treats Dragan Todorovic’s voice with paternalism of the righteous observer. As the ’specialist’ with “objective eye” - the owner of the truth about the bloody and traumatic experience that people of Yugoslavia had endured, he as the man from civilized and enlightened West, a “specialist” for the foresaken European backyard has dissected Todorovic’s testimony with arrogance that is only appropriate for the members of the Balkan Butcher’s tribe.

This position does not allow for the realistic account of the readers experience as it is skewed by this kind of “white burden” that Rieff posses when dealing with the Serbian author who may advocate for some kind of Yugoslav identity. Of course, Todorovic comes across as naive idealist who subscribed to the historical right of Yugoslavia to exist. Today, when the last remains of this “artificial” historical construction are being taken apart, the blues for Yugoslavia sounds dated and out of time.

For the kind of readers like Rieff Yugoslavia is synonymous with dictatorial-ship, chauvinism and finally fascism, so the only voice allowed in the de-nazification plan for Serbia must be soaked in self-depreciation. Even laced with the healthy dose of self-deprecating irony “The book of Revenge” does not reach the required level of humiliation prescribed for the Balkan indigenous people by righteous readers from the West who had been there and had seen it all.

For the generation of Tito’s pioneers however being proud and look at the masters straight in the eye was the virtue, not a sign of disrespect. Obviously, this is the part that Rieff could not swallow when meeting Todorovic eye to eye.

(This comment was sent to Globe and Mail but did not pass the administrator’s scrutiny).