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Briefs
Vol. 11, No. 1, December,
2005
<back to table
of contents>
Book
Reviews
The
River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet:
A
Memoir of Visegrad, Bosnia
By
Jasmina Dervisevic-Cesic
Review
by: Susan O’Neill
This memoir of a Bosnian girl who comes of age
during the disintegration of Yugoslavia is an important piece
of literature in the tradition of Anne Frank: Diary of
a Young Girl, and When Heaven and Earth Changed Places.
Through Jasmina’s eyes, we see not only
the loss and horror of war, we also feel the spirit of cooperation
fostered by it. We watch children who grew up as friends turn
away from each other to take sides based on hostilities perpetrated
long before they were born. We view both the Serbs and the
UN peacekeeping forces as obstacles in a very real human “video
game.” We see the frustration of those who must deal
with unnecessary bureaucracy in order to secure necessary
help and care. We witness wartime medical care at its most
barbaric, and are given rare insight into the human ability
to survive.
The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet is
an excellent depiction of an ordinary life blown apart by
political and cultural violence. This is history at ground
level, immediate and affecting. It is a clear-eyed look into
the worst, and the best, of human nature. Teenagers will relate
to it because of the youth of the narrator, but readers of
all ages will gain a fresh, insider perspective into the surprisingly
familiar culture and baffling
political morass that was the dying
Yugoslavia.
Aftermath:
Bosnia’s Long Road to Peace
By Sara Terry with
afterword by Lawrence Weschler
Review from Publishers Weekly,
October 2005
The horrors of the Bosnian war have been crowded
out by new horrors in new places. But while the attention
of the rest of the world has moved on, Bosnia’s people
have been left with the task of not only rebuilding a nation
from scratch but also of coming to terms with the war’s
legacy—the identification of the dead and the search
for justice.
Terry’s camera documents this grim story’s
human aspect with rich detail. In lush, vividly colored images,
Terry assembles a panorama of a society coming to terms with
overwhelming trauma. The subjects range from the blurred face
of a schoolgirl giggling on a bus, to a pair of melancholy
wheelchair-bound basketball players who were crippled during
the war, to the stomach-turning process of identifying the
dead. One quietly devastating image shows a forensic anthropologist
collapsed into a chair in 2000, exhausted from cleaning the
corpse of someone who was “ethnically cleansed.”
Despite such dark images, what emerges most strongly from
the collection is the sense that “life goes on no matter
what, for better or for worse,” as Lawrence Weschler
notes in his afterword. By showing us this persistence, Terry’s
book reaffirms photography’s crucial role as witness
and spur to conscience.
This
Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace
By Swanee Hunt
This Was Not Our War shares first-person accounts
of twenty-six Bosnian women who are reconstructing their society
following years of devastating warfare. They are from all
parts of Bosnia and represent the full range of ethnic traditions
and mixed heritages. Their ages spread across sixty years,
and their wealth ranges from expensive jewels to a few chickens.
For all their differences, they have this much in common:
all survived the war with enough emotional strength to work
toward rebuilding their country.
Reflecting on the causes of the war, they vehemently
reject the idea that age-old ethnic hatred made the war inevitable.
The women share their reactions to the Dayton Accords, the
end of hostilities, and international relief efforts. While
they are candid about the difficulties they face, they are
committed to rebuilding Bosnia based on ideals of truth, justice,
and a common humanity encompassing those of all faiths and
ethnicities.
| “Replacing
tyranny with justice, healing deep scars, exchanging hatred
for hope—the women in This Was Not Our War teach
us how.” |
 |
| President
William Jefferson Clinton |
|
Their courage and fortitude are inspirational.
Their wisdom—along with the insights Hunt has garnered
through her work with women leaders in conflicts around the
world—is instructive for anyone who cares about stopping
deadly conflict.
Pictures
Without Borders: Bosnia Revisited
Photographs and Essays by
Steve Horn
More than thirty years ago, Steve Horn traveled
through Bosnia in a Volkswagen Van, which was both home-on-the-road
as well as a mobile darkroom. His images from that first trip
capture the innocence of children in a landscape of peace,
the conviviality of the culture and the rich architectural
heritage of the Balkans. When he returned to Bosnia in 2003,
it was to a country recovering from all the tragedy of war.
This time, it was the spirit and the resilience of the people
that compelled Horn’s photographic attention, as well
as the immense losses they had suffered. In some cases, he
was able to find the same people he had captured on film as
children thirty-three year earlier.
| “These
extraordinary photographs tell the story of Bosnia’s
tragedy and slow recovery better than any written record.
Steve Horn’s own sensitive narrative – and
his encounters with people he had photographed thirty
years earlier – make this book unique in the growing
literature on Bosnia.” |
|
| Richard
Holbrooke |
|
Order from your favorite bookstore or order
a signed copy- please send check for $ 33.00 shipping included
($ 35.31 in Washington State) payable to Steve Horn at P.O.
Box 460, Lopez WA. 98261
www.pictureswithoutborders.com
|
