Mother Tongue

Mother Tongue cherishes language as the one home that can never be taken away from us. It portrays one family's struggle to protect and preserve it as they navigate their way through conflicts and power shifts which occurred in the Balkans over the past century. Mother Tongue is Tania's firsthand account of her family history, of the many exiles, separations, and reunions they lived through. This story follows the lives of three generations through two world wars and the aftermath of Soviet domination. As such, the book is a great portrayal of the way in which conflicts and power changes in the region affected people's personal lives and relationships.

Tania herself is born in Belgrade, slightly before her mother's last exile which took her out of the Balkans and to America, San Francisco. Born to a Croatian mother and a Russian father, Tania grew up with three languages, three homes - Russian, Serbian, and English. Upon her father's sudden death, she proposed to her mother to travel back to the Balkans, visit the house in Istria in which her mother was born, as well as the refugee camp in Italy where she herself lived as a child, before their move to America. The visit is filled with revealed family secrets, which allow them to put their own lives in a larger historical perspective and to understand the decisions and the events that shaped them and their experiences. For instance, Tania's mother finds out that her father gave her an Italian name to protect her during the Italian rule of Istria, that he kept this secret from everyone his whole life, as well as that the refugee camp they lived in used to be one of the largest concentration camps in Italy during World War II. The return to the Balkans after many decades brings back memories, but it also brings forward contemplations about the meaning of home and family. Tania's experience, as the experience of many immigrants and refugees, confirms that home is where we chose to and have the freedom and possibility to build our lives.

It was in 1992, while visiting her place of birth after almost fifty years in America, that I watched my mother both blossom in her original culture and acknowledge her deep adoption of her new homeland. It was going back to her first home that let her recognize where home really was. It was where she raised her children, where she would stay until she died.

This is a very ambitious work, and the book does a good job at showing how political events dictate personal choices. The takeover of Istria and a fierce policy of Italianization which prohibited all use of any language but Italian was the event that triggered the first exile of Tania's family. Her grandparents were the first ones to leave their home, in search of a place where they could live free, speaking their own language. It is this experience that shaped the family attitude towards language for generations to come. Carrying it as her main heirloom, Tania also learns to speak Serbian even though she ends up living in San Francisco, and her mother is the only person she speaks it with.

Mama developed dementia and eventually forgot English and Russian. She would chatter away in Serbian to anyone who would listen, understanding then and assuming they could understand her. In the end, it was only Sasha and I who could speak with her. So for the final time, just before she dies, my mother once again lost everything but her language - everything that mattered. When material possessions became irrelevant, as they inevitably do so, it meant more than we could have ever imagined. This time it was her own mind that robbed her, but fortunately she chose the precious legacy of voice to pass on to me. It lets me tell her, wherever she is, po nasemu, that I love her. Always.

This is a fun and easy read for anyone interested in the divisions that were created in the Balkans by the external and internal struggles for power. While the book does not analyze the root causes and the dynamics of the conflicts themselves, it does address the banality of nationalism. It sheds the light on the toxic influence nationalism has on people, and its power to even disintegrate families.

Mother Tongue is a good first book for anyone looking to understand the basics of the movement of people in the Western Balkans from 1920s to 1990s and the ways in which nationalism and colonialism affected political and personal relationships in the region. This family's story represents a common experience of all immigrants and refugees, and it is a very timely read.