"Can You Run Away from Sorrow?": Mothers Left Behind in 1990s Belgrade

This intimate social history of family life in 1990s Serbia considers how emigration effects the elders left behind.

The fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s led citizens to look for better, more stable lives elsewhere. For the older generations, however, this wasn't an option. In this powerful work, Ivana Bajic-Hajdukovic reveals the impact that waves of emigration from Serbia had on family relationships and, in particular, on elderly mothers who stayed.

With nowhere to go, and any savings given to their children to help establish new lives, these seniors faced a crumbling economy, waves of refugees entered from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, NATO bombings, and the trial and ouster of Slobodan Milosevic. Bajic-Hajdukovic explores the transformations of family relationships and daily life practices in people's homes, from foodways and childcare to gift exchanges.

"Can You Run Away from Sorrow?" illustrates not only the tremendous sacrifice of parents, but also their profound sense of loss—of their families, their country, their stability and dignity, and most importantly, of their own identity and hope for what they thought their future would be.

© 2020 Indiana University Press (Ebook): 9780253051356

Release date

Ebook: 6 October 2020