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Mother Tongue: A Saga of Three Generations of Balkan Women
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About Mother Tongue: A Saga Of Three Generations Of
Product Description *** A MUST READ FOR TRAVELERS TO CROATIA *** Mother Tongue is an exploration of lives lived in the chaos of a part of the world known as the Balkans. It follows the lives of three generations of women―Katarina, Zora, and Tania―over the last 100 years. It follows countries that dissolved, formed, and reformed. Lands that were conquered and subjugated by Fascists and Nazis and nationalists. Lives lived in exile, in refugee camps, in new worlds. Tania Romanov's story clarifies the history and geography of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro by pulling you into the lives of real people. It makes those countries come alive. And through it all glows a love of language. What language did you speak with your mother? What language did you speak with your father? What language did you speak with your brother? For Tania Romanov there are three different answers to those questions. Did you speak your mother tongue with anyone except your mother? That is the most bizarre question of all. But for Tania Romanov, the answer is no. She spoke a unique language with her mother, one in which she is still fluent. And by the way, it was not her mother's native language. The language is Serbian. Tania's mother was Croatian. Her father was Russian. Tania was born in Serbia, but left when she was six months old. She and her brother grew up in San Francisco speaking English. She didn't speak any language until she was two. Tania doesn't know why she spoke Serbian, rather than Croatian, with her mother Zora. It never occurred to her to ask until she started writing her memoir. And by then, her mother was gone. The country of birth listed on Tania's American passport changed four times in four successive renewals. Until the first time, she believed your country of birth was a fixed point. Today she knows better. Go with her as she journeys through time and history looking for answers, and finding some. Review “Mother Tongue is a story about identity in the context of history. Romanov was born in just one place but the country she came from keeps changing as the tides of history keep sweeping over the Balkans. Framed as a journey to her parents’ hometown in what is now Croatia, Romanov’s story is really about tracking the improbable line that led to who she is, down through her own life, her parents’ lives and the lives of her ancestors. The Balkans are a tangle many of us tend to gloss over because we can’t get inside it. With this fascinating memoir, Tania Romanov takes us there.” ―Tamim Ansary, author of West of Kabul, East of New York “In Mother Tongue, a story for our times, writer, photographer and world traveler Tania Romanov follows the life journeys of three generations of women (Katerina, Zora and herself) as she pieces together a complex picture of the fragmentation, war and upheaval that has tormented the people of the area known as ‘the Balkans’ for centuries. As she digs deeper, painful truths are revealed, truths that lead her back to the refugee camps of her infancy and the losses and collateral damage of war.” ―Linda Watanabe McFerrin, author of Namako, The Hand of Buddha and Dead Love “This is of historical and cultural significance. In a way, Romanov has done a service to every emigrant, to all the displaced persons out there, to the current refugee crisis, and done it by affirming the great value of ‘a melting pot.’ The forces that shape a people, that shape an individual person are so complex, and so easy to misunderstand―even by those they affect most deeply.” ―Gay Wind Campbell, author of Images Par Deux About the Author Tania Romanov Amochaev was born in Belgrade, Serbia of two displaced émigrés―a White Russian father and a Croatian mother―and spent her childhood in San Sabba, a refugee camp in Trieste. After arriving in America on the SS Constitution, Tania attended San Francisco’s public schools. She earned a degree in mathematics from the University of Ca
