Yes, it’s been nearly a month since The Odyssey was released and I only just watched it.

Unfortunately, I’m always behind on zeitgeist movies. I can’t even blame living in Serbia anymore because the real blockbusters release at the same time here as in the United States. I usually like watching those big movie events with my partner (jury’s still out if he agrees that this is a good use of our time, though), and between his shift schedule and his penchant for falling asleep during a movie if he’s tired enough, finding a block of 3 hours to watch The Odyssey was a bit complicated.

All this is to say that my opinion of the movie was definitely colored a little bit by the month(s) of online discourse I absorbed before watching it, but I was lucky enough (or brilliant enough, hehe) that my theory about the meaning of the movie, developed from trailers and the brouhaha over the casting, was confirmed by the movie itself. Because I thought we all agreed that Nolan’s The Odyssey was about the inherent corruption of modern Western civilization, right?

While I don’t know much about Nolan, I do know that he is not the world’s most subtle director, so he is pretty certain to bash us over the head with this theme, with lines such as “Our age of bronze is collapsing.” Granted, every single time I’ve read or heard a line and thought, “why do they need to bash us over the head with this,” I then see the reviews online and realize that even when you serve your film’s themes on a platter, a decent chunk of the audience will still walk away only concerned with their righteous anger over non-white actors.

Some of the dialogue was too clunky, but the way Nolan builds his theme through the journey Odysseus’s men take to get home is masterful (if sometimes reminiscent of the “Are We the Baddies” meme). The scene where the crew is shown pillaging a village, then against its burning remnants asking a village elder why they ran when they’re just some friendly Greeks, is, although unsubtle, brilliant.

The diverse casting of the Ithaca crew is reminiscent of, well, an American army platoon. Obviously the backlash against the (very surface-level) diverse casting is stupid for multiple reasons (as one of Dulé Hill’s most iconic lines goes, “Black people hadn’t been invented yet?”), but I think every casting choice was intentional, including Odysseus’s crew. Within the modern West, people of color are tentatively welcomed into the Western project, as long as they are willing to fully commit to and even commit violence on behalf of the Western project (see: rates of recruitment in the U.S. Military among minoritized communities). Himesh Patel is great as Odysseus’s right hand man, Eurylochus, who balances the tension between his loyalty to Odysseus and his care for the average soldiers he serves with in a way their commander cannot. One of my favorite shots in the film is one where the wind ruffles Eurylochus’s hair and shows that it is thinning at the back, driving home just how long these guys have been away from their homes as well.

As Odysseus realizes, you cannot commit unimaginable violence in a foreign land and not expect that violence to follow you home. The realization that the sea peoples are the marauding veterans returning home, numb to all social norms after spending 10 years in a mostly-pointless war, the instruments of the demise of their own home and civilization, is brilliant, if somewhat ruined by the Looney Tunes-style mallet of Odysseus’s conversation with Penelope at the end. The end of the Trojan War did not mark a return to peace, but instead mobilization, again, kings preparing for battle, again, sapping already-drained communities of their resources, again. Traumatized veterans, the normalization of violence, the weapons of war now flooding the streets of home for use against your neighbors—sounds familiar?

For all of the discussions of how the guilt Odysseus feels is ahistorical, Nolan does pick up on the fact that in Greek mythology, none of the Trojan heroes get a happy ending. None of them get to go home and enjoy the rest of their lives. I was surprised to find, when I read The Odyssey in full this spring, that it ends with Odysseus preparing to be exiled, specifically on a quest to find the people who know nothing of the sea and do not eat salt. All of the children’s versions of The Odyssey I read end with him living happily ever after taking the throne back, but the actual poem ends somewhat abruptly after Athena barely makes peace between Odysseus and the people of Ithaca, who are furious that after he skipped back home without any of their missing friends and loved ones he massacred the few remaining able-bodied men on the island. Even though peace is brokered by the gods, it is still implied that Odysseus will need to go on his journey to make amends for wronging the gods, in particular Poseidon, and to keep the peace in an Ithaca uneasy with his return. You can’t go home, after all. If the veterans of the Trojan War were not allowed to sail into the sunset happily, perhaps the idea that they did not deserve a happy ending is present in the original myth.

The sons of Atreus, who collectively get maybe 10-12 minutes of screentime, drive Nolan’s points home for him most directly. Menelaus brutalizes his wife as soon as he wins her back, and on the surface seems to be enjoying the feasting in his hall as a brash, swaggering bastard (a bit of a change from the poem, where Helen admits she drugs Menelaus continuously to manage his PTSD). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he’s made up to look very much like Andrew Tate, a man who promises glory, strength, and domination over women, but whose life is ultimately hollow and characterized by meaningless violence. The most brilliant casting choice in the movie is arguably the schmuckian Benny Safdie as Agamemnon. Agagememnon stalks through the movie, a menacing presence in black, a spectre of violence overseeing Troy’s destruction (seriously, that scene where the gates open and he’s at the front and center made me gasp, even though I knew what was waiting), yet one who, as soon as he removes his helmet, is so vulnerable that he can be killed by his wife, so stupid to think he will be welcomed with open arms by a mother whose child he has slain. The emperor has no clothes. Or a helmet.

The question of Nolan’s faithfulness to the original poem is best handled by the classicists, but I find some of the similarities and departures revealing. I like that Nolan kept the non-linear structure of the poem, as well as the fact that Odysseus is not revealed on-screen until many minutes into the movie, in the same way he does not make an appearance at all in the first few books in the epic that bears his name. Telemachus is perfectly whiny and kind of a dick to his mother (he always reminded me of those sons of single mothers who blame their mothers for their dads being deadbeats). Nolan does turn down the sexiness of the original epic, but also the sexual violence included in it—not just against women, as in the original epic the sex Odysseus has with both Circe and Calypso is (maybe surprisingly) portrayed as non-consensual. Perhaps the biggest departure, and biggest flaw, of the movie is that Nolan’s Odysseus is honestly not that clever, as my friend Kiša pointed out. His defining characteristic in the epic is of a trickster, one who is clever and revels in his own cleverness, while in this movie he’s mostly a typical grizzled sad-sack veteran. I think that this cleverness could have still worked with Nolan’s themes, as it might have helped explain why Odysseus realizes the enormity of what they had done at Troy in a way that his fellow veterans such as Menelaus did not.

Anyway, I’ve come to the realization that I recommend watching zeitgeist movies later (although maybe be more offline than I was). The movie theaters will be emptier, meaning that it’s easier to tune out the moronic locals who make audible groaning noises when Lupita comes on screen but know so little about movies they don’t know they shouldn’t kick the seats in front of them in the cinema. It also is a shame to lock movies into the first weeks or so when they are the subject of online discourse, and then move on from them. We are clearly finding new things to explore in The Odyssey, millennia later, so why shouldn’t our movies be given time to breathe?

Nolan critiques the violence of American hegemony, yet seems unable to fully break from it. I know that a lot of Greeks were upset about the lack of Greek actors or attention paid to Greek interpretations of The Odyssey, which on the one hand is somewhat valid given the exploitative relationship between Greece the real place and Westerners seeking “Ancient Greece.” However, the criticism often veered into Greek nationalism (and sometimes straight-up racism), which, especially as a non-Greek Balkan person who’s seen the very real political-economic consequences of Greek cultural nationalism on its neighbors, I tend to have less sympathy for. Doing all that for The Odyssey, an epic which has been foundational to education structures outside of Greece for literal millennia and has always been reworked, adapted, and completely upended within the local context, in particular I think is a lost cause.

More egregious is the fact that Nolan shot part of The Odyssey in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, assisting in Moroccan attempts to whitewash this occupation and profit from it. What is the use in filming an invective against hegemony if the material choices made while filming winds up supporting it?

Maybe that’s one of the real lessons of Nolan’s film—hegemony is a hell of a drug. You can only break from it when the violent consequences of it come knocking at your front door.

Feđa Štukan1 je naljutio baš dosta ljudi ovih dana. Da pokušam sumirati, u intervjuu za crnogorsku televiziju izjavio je kako se po nečijoj playlisti može protumačiti koliki mu je IQ i koliko je knjiga pročitao.

U početku mene stvarno nije dotakla ova izjava. Jedini razlog zašto sam je uopće vidjela je jer mi ju je poslao moj drug Marko, s kojim imam prijateljstvo zasnovano na osnovi „If I saw this, you have to see it too”. Mene iskreno ne zanimaju bilo kakve teorije koje još uvijek koriste IQ testove kao zamjenu za inteligenicju. Zapravo, svatko tko spomene IQ kao evaluaciju nečije inteligencije kod mene napravi suprotan efekt gdje ja onda tu osobu smatram manje inteligentnom od one koju je pokušala ponižavati. Ali isto tako, kao osoba koja živi u regiji svijeta koja je skoro potpuno oblikovana (ili okupirana) od strane turbofolk kulture, obično ne pustim suzu za povrijeđenu čast ljudi koji slušaju Karleušu, Sašu Matića i slično. Smatram da su dovoljno dobili time što su apsolutni kulturni pobjednici, imaju (skoro) sve klubove, radiostanice i javne događaje, pa ne treba im još i moje poštovanje ili da ih ja nešto čuvam od snobizma gradskih liberala koji su snobovi upravo jer je taj snobizam jedino što je njima (nama?) ostalo. Kako bi se reklo kod mene kući,2 „Everyone will be fine”.

Međutim, nešto me zagolicalo u vezi Feđine3 izjave i razmišljam o njoj već par dana. Džabe sam rekla Marku da me takve gluposti ne zanimaju, evo Marko, primi moje izvinjenje! Jer, iako su mi teze vezane za IQ glupave i nikakve, gospodin Štukan ima donekle pravo u srži svoje izjave. Istina je da je čitanje u tzv. regionu postala stvar koju radi samo određen broj ljudi iz određene društvene klase. Istina je da čitanje obično ide rame uz rame s određenim drugim kulturološkim preferencijama koje su isto atribut određenog društvenog sloja – poput, recimo, muzike. Vjerojatno se ne bih nikad izrazila na način kako se gospodin Štukan izrazio, no istina je da samo određeni sloj balkanskog društva čita knjige.

To, međutim, otvara pitanje - kako, pobogu, je jedna bazična društveno-kulturna aktivnost poput čitanja postala stvar subkulture? Možda sad progovara prosvetna radnica u meni, ali ja ovo ne vidim kao jedan atribut dobrote i kvalitete određenog sloja društva što su samo oni koji čitaju, nego kao ogromni društveni poraz.

Gledajući statistike, istina je da poražavajuće mali broj stanovništva na Balkanu redovno čita knjige. Po Eurostat istraživanju iz 2024. godine, Hrvati čitaju daleko ispod prosjeka za EU te smo peta najgora zemlja članica po broju pročitanih knjiga po godini – te godine samo 42 % Hrvata pročitalo je bar jednu knjigu. U Srbiji je statistika još i gora te samo otprilike 35,2 % Srba pročita bar jednu knjigu godišnje, a dvije trećine stanovništva ne čita uopće. Treba imati u vidu da je ovo statistika za čitanje jedne knjige godišnje, što svakako nije znak redovnog čitanja ili praćenja književne scene, i da popis nije vodio računa o žanru ili kvaliteti pročitane knjige – ta jedna pročitana knjiga može biti sve popularnija popularna psihologija, memoari nekog svećenika, obavezna lektira za fakultet ili slično.

Za vrijeme socijalističke Jugoslavije nisu se provodile takve ankete koje bi nam dale prosječan broj pročitanih knjiga, ali se iz drugih statistika, poput fondusa biblioteka, veličine naklada izdavačkih kuća i postotka građana koji su čitali novine, može zaključiti da je kultura čitanja bila rasprostranjenija nego sada. To također potvrđuju anegdotalna sjećanja da su ljudi za vrijeme Jugoslavije više čitali (pitajte obližnjeg starijeg kulturnjaka, vaše roditelje ili prolistajte malo internetom). Vjerojatno bi, da se ova anketa provodila za vrijeme Jugoslavije, postotak ljudi koji su čitali bar jednu knjigu godišnje bio veći nego što je sad u njezinim državama nasljednicama (osim Slovenije). Ovo su sve nagađanja i anegdote, ali postoji jedna statistika koja ipak jasno govori o kulturi i politici čitanja u Jugoslaviji – samo 51,5 % stanovništva bilo je pismeno za vrijeme Kraljevine (a do formiranja socijalističke Jugoslavije ta se statistika značajno pogoršala zbog ratnog stanja). Do 1981. godine stupanj pismenosti porastao je na 82,4 %, što je svejedno nesavršeno, ali pokazuje koliki je značajni pomak donesen za vrijeme Jugoslavije. Ta statistika o pismenosti dodatno obogaćuje jugoslovensku čitalačku kulturu jer to znači da, i ako značajan broj odraslog stanovništva nije znalo čitati, onaj dio koji je bio opismenjen bogato je sudjelovao u kulturi čitanja.

I da je opstala Jugoslavija, rasprostranjenost TV-a i mobilnih telefona vjerojatno bi smanjila broj čitatelja, kao što je to učinila u svim državama svijeta, ali na našim prostorima taj je pad u redovnom čitanju značajno veći nego kod susjeda. Što se onda dogodilo? Da li su rat i raspad Jugoslavije proizveli nekakav „gamma ray” zaglupljivanja koji je zahvatio stanovništvo bivše države?

Razlika se, kao i skoro uvijek, nalazi u politici. Pored strategije opismenjivanja, socijalistička država Jugoslavija je itekako pridodala važnosti čitanju i kulturi, ne kao elitni fenomen, nego kao masovni fenomen. Širila se mreža gradskih biblioteka, koje su osnivane i u manjim mjestima poput Bele Palanke nakon rata i tako približavale čitanje populaciji kojoj redovno čitanje ranije nije bilo dostupno, pogotovo u vrijeme prije masovnog korištenja automobila i lakog putovanja u grad. Pored gradskih biblioteka, dobar dio tvornica su imale svoje radničke biblioteke i kulturno-književne sekcije sindikata da bi približile kulturu radnicima. U tvornici gdje je moj otac radio, Uljanik, postojalo je 7 sekcija radničkog kluba, uključujuči i Literarna sekcija, i redovne kulturne manifestacije. Tata se sjeća redovnih filmskih večeri posvećenim “artsy” filmovima poput onih Lordana Zafranovića.

A što je sad? Sada stručnjaci za čitanje i obrazovnu politiku u svim zemljama Balkana kukaju zbog nemara svojih vlasti. U Hrvatskoj postoji Nacionalna strategija za poticanje čitanja, no stručnjaci ističu kako se ona zapravo ne provodi i sredstva koja država izdvaja za mjere koje su dokazane u povećavanju broja pročitanih knjiga, poput sredstava za školske knjižnice, sramotno su mala. Ta strategija ne može ništa poduzeti protiv situacije gdje je cijena knjige postala izuzetno visoka, te neka nova izdanja koštaju i do 35 eura. U vrijeme inflacije i sve rastućih troškova života, teško da si prosječan hrvatski radnik može odvojiti novac za redovnu kupnju knjiga. Hrvatska daje statistiku da je oko 30 % građana učlanjeno u knjižnice, međutim, u to su uključene školske knjižnice gdje su đaci skoro pa automatski učlanjeni – ako gledamo statistiku samo za narodne knjižnice, ta se brojka spusti na oko 11 % građana.

U Srbiji strategija specifično za poticanje čitanja ne postoji. Knjižnice se spominju u Nacionalnoj strategiji za razvoj kulture, gdje država Srbija naglašava da je tek malo više od 7 % građana učlanjeno u knjižnice. Kao jedan od razloga sama država navodi nedovoljan obujam građe, koja ima samo 57,45 % propisanog standarda, i pogotovo slab obujam nove građe, činjenica koja odbija potencijalne čitatelje. Koji je smisao otići u knjižnicu ako nema knjige koja će te zanimati ili ima samo raspadnuta jugoslavenska izdanja (živjela Jugoslavija, da je nije bilo, police u gradskim knjižnicama bivše države zjapile bi prazne). Udubila sam se malo u istraživanje politike čitanja u državama bivše Juge, a nisam političarka4, ali dovoljne su dvije anegdote. Otkad redovno boravim po Nišu, znači zadnje četiri godine, zatvorile su se tri knjižare. Suvremeni fondus gradske knjižnice, koliko sam uspjela vidjeti, uspije stati u jednu sobu. Ovo je treći najveći grad u Srbiji s otprilike 250 000 stanovnika u širem području grada.

Ako su naše države zakazale u svojim politikama čitanja i kulture, srećom naša l(j)evica predlaže alternativne politike bazirane na radničkoj solidarnosti i jednakosti među klasama – oh wait. Suvremena postjugoslavenska ljevica se većinom bavi kulturom jer tamo nalazi polje svog rada i ispunjavanja, i nekakvu sigurnu luku od realno strašnih sila što nas čekaju izvan tog polja. Međutim, ta kulturizacija balkanske ljevice ne znači da je ona bar u ovom polju formirala smislene politike. Postoje oni koji vide kulturu kao „svoje” polje, polje zadnjeg otpora protiv navale barbara na zidinama, u suštini ljudi poput Feđe. Ti ljudi žele više novca za kulturu, ali da ona ostaje elitna kakva je i sada – drugim riječima, da dobiju više novca za sebe i svoje prijatelje.

Drugi ljudi sebe nazivaju antielitistima. To su ljudi koji su najglasnije urlali na Feđinu izjavu, glasnije od same radničke klase iako su u njeno ime urlali. Oni slušaju „cajke” jer to sluša narod i sami sebi tapšaju po leđima kako nisu elitisti jer su se približili radničkoj klasi slušajući njenu muziku. I te ljude mrzim. Ti ljudi tretiraju osiromašenje kulturnog sadržaja radničke klase ne kao rezultat političkog izbora nego kao prirodnu manifestaciju njihovih želja i preferencija. Ti ljudi žele zamrznuti radničku klasu u to stanje u kojem im je zanimljivo, umjesto da žele nešto bolje za te ljude – ili barem ono isto što oni mogu imati kada završe sa „slumming it”. Tretiraju radnike kao nešto pametnije gorile u zoološkom vrtu koje je zabavno imitirati odlaskom na koncert Ace Lukasa5 prije nego prestaneš s LARP-om i odeš na svoju hipstersku žurku u Beogradu ili Zagrebu.

Nikome nije još palo na pamet, ono, “ee buraz ajd možda bi mogli pokušat ono, ponovo oživit infrastrukturu kulture za radničke klase na noge pa da ova kultura bude dostupna svima, umjesto da je držimo za sebe ili fetišiziramo “prirodno” nekulturne ljude prije nego idemo na književnu večer naših frendova.” Nije kao da se to nije barem pokušalo prije manje od pola stoljeća i nije kao da ruševine te infrastrukture ne stoje još uvijek oko nas.

Možda mi se ovaj citat ovoliko uvukao u mozak jer ja sam okružena ljudima koji čitaju, iako ne dolazim iz visokoobrazovne sredine. Moj pokojni nono, koji mislim da je samo završio 4. razred osnovne škole, je do smrti čuvao primjerke Istarske danice, ilegalni samizdat časopis na kome je učio čitati na hrvatskom kao klinac za vrijeme Italijanske okupacije Istre. Sjećam se kako je čitao, micao usne uz riječi, ali je čitao, kad ga je kiša otjerala iz polja. Moj otac, emigrant u SAD, svima kaže kako mu je najdraža knjiga Uliks od Joycea, čitalački podvig na koji se ja nisam još osudila. A čitanje moje majke je bio toliki sastavni dio mog djetinjstva da jedan od mojih školskih sastava u 3. godini osnovne škole je bilo o našoj zajedničkoj navici čitanja. Nakon što sam upoznala mog zaručnika, upoznala sam i njegovu majku, također radnicu, također osoba koja voli čitati.6

Svi oni bi vjerojatno više čitali da mogu, kao što bi vjerojatno to radilo više ljudi njihove klase. Primjera radi, prosječni radni tjedan u Srbiji je treći najdulji u Europi, s prosjekom od 40,6 sati rada. Kao i uvijek kad se radi ekonomski prosjek kod nas, ovaj prosjek prikriva koliki je ogroman jaz između klasa. Dok beogradski hipsteri razrađuju ideju četverodnevnog radnog tjedna, dobar dio radničke klase, pogotovo izvan Beograda, radi minimum šest dana tjedno, u smjenama i po 10 sati, ponekad i do 20 dana bez jednog dana pauze. Malo ljudi poslije takvog dana bi htjelo bilo što drugo napraviti osim dremnuti, staviti noge u hladan lavor i potpuno isključiti mozak uz televiziju i doom-scrollanje. I onda u krevet za sutrašnje buđenje u 4 ujutro. Pa ti čitaj Dostojevskog u tim uvjetima, kad ti je i mozak i tijelo zgnječeno.

Umjesto da se sladi nad elitnom čitalačkom publikom, kulturna sekcija bivše Juge trebala bi što više raditi na tome da se taj krug proširi jer to može samo poboljšati naše književne scene – i ne mislim samo financijski jer će se krug potencijalnih kupaca knjiga proširiti. Ovako su se naše književne scene svele na to da manji regionalni centri, koji su za vrijeme Jugoslavije imali živahne kulturne scene, imaju po jednog dežurnog pisca, i može postojati samo taj jedan. U većim gradovima se vrte male, incestuozne scene gdje se sve vrti oko jedne male grupe prijatelja i poznanika, iskrenu recenziju je nemoguće napisati zbog potencijalno važne osobe koju ćeš uvrijediti, i svi jedni drugima pušu u vrit zbog sve osrednjeg stvaralačkog djela.

Vratite narod u knjižare, i knjižare narodu. A o muzici tek ima da pričamo.

After the England-France game where we got to watch 10 goals in 90 (okay, 100) minutes, this essay is not as ground-breaking to write as it was when I first thought of it. The game was fun, the game was exhilarating, and from a neutral fan’s perspective it’s almost certainly going to be a more entertaining game than the final.1True World Cup watchers know that the third-place match is often more fun to watch than the final as the pressure is lower and play tends to be more free-flowing.

However, my defense of the third-place match is not based on pure entertainment value, although soccer is in fact part of the wider entertainment industry (yes, like Love Island) so I do believe that the entertainment factor of a game is, in fact, of value to fans. The fans are ultimately what fuels this game (it may seem like money right now, but there wouldn’t be any money if there weren’t billions of willing eyeballs in front of the TV), so I don’t think the entertainment value should be overlooked. That being said, entertainment is not the only reason this game matters. After the comments from Tuchel, BBC pundits, English fans, and some of the French players implying that the third-place match is beneath them, I feel the need to defend the third-place match as a game with its own purpose in the ecosystem of the World Cup.

It is true that other soccer tournaments do not have this match (as a child, I was surprised that the Euros didn’t have this, for reasons I will get to later). But in the wider sporting world, fighting for third place is the standard, not the deviation from the norm. The Olympics have third-place matches. Other team sports, like basketball, waterpolo, and so on, have third place matches in their world championships. In most combat sports, like wrestling, you go through an entire repechage, or several bouts often in the same day, for a chance at the bronze medal. Only soccer players (and only soccer players from certain teams) act as if a World Cup bronze medal is beneath them, an attitude that I’ve rarely seen displayed by other athletes.

The bronze medal match is your last chance to win something. This is different from just playing the semi-finals. You qualify for the semi-finals, you win a bronze medal. Two different verbs. Two different emotions and states of being. It’s an opportunity to send your fans home with a positive memory, and to show respect for the entire team which brought you to the World Cup, the team on the field and off the field. One of the reasons why some fans were furious at the French players for their nonchalant attitude in Saturday’s game is that this was Deschamps’s last match in charge of the French national team, and the nonchalant attitude seemed seriously disrespectful.

I guess the reason why I never understood the hatred for the third-place match is that I’m Croatian (as I type this, I am wearing my 2008 Croatia jersey, as I have reached the bottom of the clean shirts shelf). The 1998 World Cup was before my first birthday, so I do not remember it, but growing up, I remember hearing that we had one third place, once. I came of age watching the Croatia team with Kranjčar, Pršo, and Kovač barely scraping a draw against Australia (no offense to those players but the late 2000s were not always an easy time to be a Croatian fan). Yet, we had the memory of that bronze medal to tide us over—we had done it once, we could do it again, and we did. More importantly, Croatia had proven that it was up there with the rest of them, coming out of a decade of war and turmoil, no less.

For smaller countries, this match matters. If you’re a fan from a smaller country, in your heart of hearts, you know that you may not be able to make a final, and that you almost certainly will not win the World Cup. Not against Spain, which has had decades to fine-tune its insane academy system, or against France, which has a pool of talent in the greater Paris area so deep that it provides the line-ups for half a dozen teams at the World Cup besides France. However, you can grab one of those less shiny medals, signaling to the big guys that even though they have more players than you, more clubs than you, and more money than you, that you are one of the top teams as well. You may be smaller, but you should never, ever be counted out.

That is why Davor Šuker, a member of that bronze medal team from 1998, took umbrage with Tuchel’s comments. Šuker said (and it’s worth reprinting these comments in full):

“I think the rich don’t want to play when they lose. Some have so many trophies and are so rich that this match means nothing to them. My message to them is to be quiet, to respect all 211 participants, and to understand that the world doesn’t belong only to them. The world also belongs to the medium-sized nations, the small ones, and those who simply enjoy football.”

Even if the players and coaching team didn’t want to play in this match, they didn’t have to state so publicly. To do so is disrespectful to all the other nations who would have killed to get a chance to play in the third-place match. Every team goes into the FIFA World Cup knowing that there is a third-place match, if you are lucky enough to get so far. Every team goes into the FIFA World Cup knowing that if they qualify for the semi-finals and lose it, they will have to play a third-place match—in fact, that they will still have an opportunity to win a medal. Even if it’s not the shiniest prize, you owe it to your fans to at least try to win that one as well, rather than whining about not wanting to play that game.

I just have one amendment to make to Šuker’s comments. While England is a rich country (compared to Croatia, at least), in terms of soccer, I would argue that they are not part of the large, rich nations surrounded by trophies at all. Their last success came before my mother was born. Despite their bluster, despite the history, England are one of the small and medium-sized nations of soccer after all, and not at all above playing in the game which would be their best-ever finish in a World Cup in living memory (the players certainly seemed to want to win, unlike the French).

Maybe that’s why they had to make such a stink about being above the third-place match. They didn’t want to admit that they belong down here with the rest of us, never quite able to reach the level of a Spain or Argentina.

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It was always a bit complicated to root for any US team. The arrogant international hegemon now also wants to dominate in sports? The women’s teams, most of them at least, tend to openly distance themselves from the worst parts of American nationalism, even as their superior financial resources allow them to dominate the sport unfairly and they never completely shake that American arrogance.

It is maybe hardest to root for the U.S. Men’s National Team in soccer12. To be fair, their relationship with Donald Trump is not an uncomplicated one. Several players, such as Tim Weah and Weston McKennie, criticized their forced visit to the White House. The team is very different from the nearly lily-white teams of the past, with several Black players not only starting, but becoming the tournament’s major breakout stars. There was hope, the USMNT fans said. This year’s team was proof that there could be a different America.

And yet. There is Pulisic, MAGA-affiliated and celebrating his goals with the Trump dance - and as he’s the talisman of the team, you can’t just say it’s one guy. There is the social media of Trump’s various agencies, using the men’s team’s success during the World Cup to spread their hateful agenda on social media. And yet, and yet, and yet.

And then there is the most egregious one, Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension, overturned for the Belgium game in blatant violation of FIFA procedures after a phone call from Donald Trump.

As has been commented, Balogun is an unlikely candidate to be the face of Trump’s America. The son of Nigerian immigrants, the subject of a phone call by a president who is a white supremacist. Able to represent the United States only due to an accident of birthright citizenship, an amendment of the constitution which Trump was the first president ever to try to overturn. Folarin Balogun, now that he underperformed against Belgium and is no longer the winner Trump thought he would be, will almost likely get discarded right away by the same conservatives who championed him just last week.

Balogun may be an unlikely candidate for being the face of Trump’s America, but he is a good reminder of the fact that American identity seems to trump everything. If you can bring glory to the nation and further our imperial project, we will overlook the ways in which you are an untermensch, until you can’t anymore.

It would be a mistake to see this American supremacy, both in relation to the outside world and in relation to internal identity, as exclusively a right wing project. The Balogun affair was mostly met with cheering from the American public, including liberals and leftists. They used it as an opportunity to dunk on Europeans (when the whole world was against this move, not just UEFA), make pronouncements with authority on a sport they only realized existed yesterday, and insult everyone who tried to correct them. Progressive politics, even leftist politics, do not seem to matter without a thorough reckoning on your position in the world as an American. Disavowing your identity is not necessary, but some critical thinking probably is, as is seen by the ease with which one can slip into casual American supremacy on Twitter.

And to clarify, having a red card suspension postponed outside of FIFA procedure is unfair. To make such a major decision after a phone call from a sitting president, even if not the only corrupt thing FIFA’s ever done, is a gross violation of FIFA’s own rules and without precedent in my lifetime. There is no way that the presidents of Cabo Verde or Bosnia & Herzegovina would get the same treatment if they tried to intervene in a player’s red card, but everyone cheering for this knows that. They enjoy everything else going their way because they’re American, are used to everything going their way, and want soccer to follow suit. The progressives and the liberals and the leftists, who think they are different than other Americans, will be no different until we put in the effort to unpack what we think we deserve and why we think we deserve it.

And Folarin Balogun. He played against Belgium, as he was enabled to do, as he was told to do, and did not make much of an impact3. He apologized to Belgian coach Rudi Garcia after the match, although he took the unfairly given advantage anyway. His career will forever be associated with this stain on the World Cup’s legacy (it already makes up a significant section of his Wikipedia page). The story of his World Cup until now was of a breakout striker who was one of the bright stars in the USMNT, and now he will forever be associated with Trump and Infantino’s ignominy, yet another immigrant chewed up and spit out once he’s no longer useful.

I’ve seen a lot of people ask why Folarin didn’t just refuse to play when he was unfairly reinstated. That would be the sportsmanlike thing to do, probably. But then again, it should probably be expanded to ask why the entire USMNT, despite most of its members seemingly being against Trump, has not said anything about this or about the many other instances where Trump has attempted to use their (slightly overstated) success at this World Cup for his own purposes. Why did Tim Ream just stand there in silence during Pochettino’s fawning phone call with Trump? Why did Weah and McKennie not refuse to visit the Trump White House with their club, Juventus, and, if they felt compelled to go, why did they not offer stronger critiques beyond “it was weird”? Why did none of them speak out about the ongoing misuse of their success for official government social media, usually spreading hateful messages about immigrants and other minorities?

I cannot speak for what is in Balogun’s mind, as I do not know him. But I’m not entirely sure he could have disobeyed match instructions, or that it even occurred to him as a possibility. There is no telling how much hate he would have received for refusing to play, especially as a Black man and an immigrant, and it is a lot to ask of one person to bear that. Institutions of male socialization, such as the army or male professional sports, indoctrinate its members into cults of complete obedience and hierarchy.

But it’s also a powerful drug, power. The power that comes with winning. The power that comes with knowing that you’ll always have the most powerful man on the planet a phone call away to come in clutch and save you. And that kind of power is difficult to give up, whether you’re a random schmuck on Twitter who’s still got a better life than another random schmuck with a weaker passport, or a professional athlete.

The problem is that this power is not forever, especially as the cracks in the American Empire are slowly widening. What will you do when that relative power is challenged?

Get cooked by an out-of-shape Lukaku wearing a Rene Magritte-inspired jersey, it seems.

May was a bit of an underwhelming month for reading. I had a week of bureaucratic tasks to take care of in Croatia, which meant spending time with my grandmother and not a lot of time reading. My grad school work is also catching up to me, and I now understand everyone who says that going to graduate school made their personal reading fall behind (I thought I would be different, what a fool I was).

I still managed to get some reading done, so here is a lightning round of reviews.

So Late in the Day - Claire Keegan

Dua Lipa selected this book as part of her book club, and the library hold was quick enough. The edition I read had three short stories. The tagline “Stories of Men and Women” is a bit simplistic, but the idea of gender relations really was a throughline to the collection. What I liked is that it wasn’t as simple as “woman innocent, man evil”—especially in “Antarctica,” Keegan really plays with what we see as an “innocent” victim. In the first two stories, “So Late in the Day” and “The Long and Painful Death,” she focuses on the smaller ways in which men put down women, but also the ways that women are conditioned to be complicit in our own diminishing.

Coup de Grace - Marguerite Yourcenar

This was my first Yourcenar, and I’m not entirely sure if I would have picked it up had I known the entire story was from the point of view of a gay proto-fascist (implied to later become a Nazi). Then I had an existential crisis about what that meant about me, if that meant I was the worst kind of reader, and if the time I spent on Tumblr from 2013-2017 caused some permanent damage. All that is to say, the writing is really interesting, the moral questions raised by Yourcenar fascinating, but the extended immersion in an anti-Semitic aristocrat’s POV gets nauseating and I’m glad the book wasn’t one page longer.

Black Skin, White Masks - Frantz Fanon

Nothing intelligent I can say about this book that others have not said already, except that everyone should read it. However, I am curious to read critiques from Third-World/decolonial feminists of this work because it’s starting to seem as if Fanon’s work gets really uncomfortable about women.

I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett

My favorite Tiffany Aching book so far. The stakes are higher, which also means that Tiffany is growing up. This was stressful to read at times and a somewhat harrowing depiction of mob violence and how the mob mentality forms. I also like how Pratchett weaves in elements of British folk culture into these books, I didn’t realize the “rough music” was a real thing until this book.

The Odyssey - Homer (tr. Emily Wilson)

in lieu of a traditional review, here is a list of questions I Googled while reading this:

• Why is Nestor called the horse lord?

• Menelaus driving people out of the town to give Odysseus land - bromance?

• Did Helen willingly leave Sparta?

• How many children did Helen and Menelaus have?

• Helen’s ties to magic?

• Abject powerlessness in face of gods - theme?

• Did any fighters in Troy have a happy ending?

• Female desire in the Odyssey (Calypso, Nausicaa)

• Who is Aeetes?

• Why are they crying all the time? How many times does Odysseus cry?

• Was Odysseus raped?

• Who are the people who do not salt their food?

• Who was Amphitrite and why was everyone scared of her?

• Significance of barley in Ancient Greece?

• Why does Odysseus tell the swineherd such an elaborate lie?

• Is Athena a pick me?

• Role of meat?

• What does a sneeze mean?

• Who was King Echetus?

• Is Artemis a goddess of death?

• Who were the daughters of Pandareus?

A more complicated (fitting) and weirder epic than most people seem to think.

1. The poppies are in bloom.

I notice this while driving along, or more accurately, being driven, along a round-trip road trip of over 2000 kilometers. I want to get out to look at the flowers closer, roll in the fields, take a picture, but we have somewhere to be. I always want to do this, every year, and somehow never find the time. Instead I watch them wave in the wake of cars speeding along the highway, the breeze coming off the bumpers swirling their heads around, thinking about how I really should get more comfortable driving so that my partner is not the only one with the responsibility on the road.

I say this every time we make this trip, and yet I never do this either.

2. My partner’s stoic drive to my grandmother’s village from our home, 12-14 hours each way depending on traffic, the border, and how many stops we make along the way, without my assistance because I refuse to get comfortable behind the wheel, is one of the many reasons in my low moments I think he is much better than me.

Another is how rooted he is in place. As someone who never fully belonged anywhere, and who spent most of my early adulthood moving around a lot, I’m eye-wateringly jealous of people who are rooted in one place, the way he is. He knows every hiking path in the mountains around his home. He identifies the plants along the way as I huff and puff to keep up with him. He used to be a beekeeper, and if I ever accept his rootedness as the path forward for our life, will restart.

3. One of the consequences of my in-between life is that I never feel fully rooted in the seasons anywhere, something I’ve written about before. I’m familiar with the plants of early spring here, the smell that means fall has arrived there. I experience seasons in snatches, sometimes surprising myself when I realize how far along they have changed.

I’ve become more familiar with the in-between places than anything else.

4. The in-between places seem to stretch further and further. It gets harder and harder to move between my homes. As I wait on the border for longer and longer, navigate increasingly labyrinthine transportation options, it almost feels intentional, as if I am being cut off, as if we are being cut off. My home feels further away from me. If I lose even these ties, I no longer know who I am.

1. The acacia trees are in bloom. Like every year during acacia season, as soon as the flowers bloom, two weeks of unseasonal rain and cold hit, stopping the bees from collecting nectar. Acacia honey is getting hard to come by. I know this because of my partner, the beekeeper. The sudden temperature changes, unseasonal early thaws, the sudden late frosts make it difficult for bees to survive. Sometimes, I relish my own not-knowing. It is easier.

April was a pretty productive reading month for me, not just in terms of the quantity of reading, but in the quality of the books I read - some interesting genre reads, lots of interesting classics, and one which…will be discussed at the end of this round-up.

Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett

I’m continuing my quest through Discworld, focusing on the Tiffany Aching books first. This was my favorite so far. Pratchett really lets the narrative mature with Tiffany, giving her bigger challenges in each book. I really loved this dynamic with the Wintersmith here, I think that Pratchett manages to capture some of the nuance in (I really hate to use this term but it seems the most appropriate) paranormal romance. He captures the tension between the real appeal that the Wintersmith has for a young teenager, showing how this could be romantic, while never romanticizing this relationship or overlooking the power imbalance.

Victim - Andrew Bordyga

I read this for ’s book club, and we had a really lively discussion about it. I was a lot more positive about it than most of the people, at least in my session, maybe because as someone from New York, who went to a school similar to Javi’s fictionalized school, and was a first generation college student myself who had to navigate this choice of packaging my trauma for potential gain (for the record, my choice was very different from Javi’s, and I do still wonder if I could have gotten into a better college had I chose differently). This novel is a satire of the victim complex, and like most satirical novels, it does fall flat on characterization and plot development at times.

The Dance of the Seagull - Andrea Camilleri

Also continuing is my quest through the Inspector Montalbano books, which have probably spoiled me for other detective novels. Camilleri manages to weave in some pretty poetic language, cutting critiques of the Italian political establishment, and a weaving network of references to literature and in this installment, Montalbano’s own TV series. The image of the dancing seagull at the beginning was really evocative. However, the middle-aged horndog antics are getting a bit repetitive. Not to get too stereotypical, but there’s only so much you can expect from old Italian men.

Pirika - Petre M. Andreevski

This was another book club pick, this time for my Balkan book club. After a few disappointing choices, we wanted to go back and read a few classics, so we chose this Macedonian classic. The novel is set in a Macedonian village during the Balkan Wars and World War One and split into two perspectives, Velika, and her husband, Jon. Andreevski covers a lot of ground in this novel: nationalism, the cycle of violence in Balkan families, exploitation and poverty’s role in this cycle, shame, and the relationship with the land, among other themes. It honestly was a palate cleanser to read a book written from a time outside of the modern publishing machine (not to sound too much like Javi from Victim here). I also have a working theory about the difference between books that cover traumatic topics such as this one and what I’ve termed “hold-your-children-tight” literature, which I’ll write about more in another post!

I would also like to take this book and use it to beat over the head the following: people who romanticize the past, people who romanticize village life, anti-vaxxers, people who romanticize war, tradwives, guys who say “our grandmas used to give birth in the fields.”

The River Between - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Continuing my run of the world’s classics, I finally read this work from Thiong’o which has been sitting on my shelf for years. This is one of the books where I really want to read some secondary literature, (especially from African feminist scholars, I’m curious about their interpretations of his female characters), because I feel as if there’s so much more there below the service that I would like to understand. I really found the tension he describes between Christianity and the traditional ways interesting, and the way it turns into a mutually radicalizing effect, very often playing out across the bodies of women. The character of Waiyaki and his very Messianic journey is also so beautifully written.

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I’m not going to write a lot about this book because I feel as if I can’t say anything intelligent that people haven’t said before, and this is another one where I want to read some secondary literature (please let me know any recommendations). I wish I’d had this in a physical copy so I could underline, annotate, and reread passages more easily than on my Kindle.

The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

This was potentially my favorite read of the month, and my first book of Wharton’s. There’s so much I was struck by, but on the sentence level, Wharton has some of the best craft I’ve ever read. Just one example—every single time she writes out Newland Archer’s full name it has such a disproportionate heft to it.

Beautiful World, Where Are You - Sally Rooney

I’m finally finished with my reading of all of Sally Rooney’s work. Sure, if you boil her plots down to the simplest elements (men and women have romantic relationships), they are simplistic, but it is amazing how much variety and richness she manages to find within those relationships.

Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving - Pete Walker

My therapist gives me homework sometimes.

(if you care about spoilers don’t read this last review)

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty - Akwaeke Emezi

I am angry at my eyes for reading this, at the publishing industry for publishing this, at everyone for recommending this. This book pretended at depth, but when I wanted to dive in, I bonked my head on the massive rock in the shallows. And while I was still clutching my head wound, the book was continuing to insist on its depth.

I don’t mind characters who commit morally grey actions, or “problematic” relationships. What I do mind is when a narrative wants to have its cake and eat it too—it wants to explore complex topics in a relationship, but is extremely invested in the reader thinking only positively about the characters. That’s what it felt like with this book. Every decision Feyi made was not only excused in her own head (because she has trauma and can do whatever she wants) but is immediately absolved by the narrative through events that are completely unprecedented.

The second thing I wanted to point out about this book is that even though people praised its prose, I found the writing style difficult to get through. There was some beautiful imagery, but the dialogue was ridiculous, like watching a pilot about a sitcom of Black millenials in 2012 Bushwick, obsessed with its own cleverness and supposed fun, that it doesn’t realize just how grating it is. Also, there is a 61-year-old man who literally says, “So that just happened,” and I’m sorry, but any book who has this line automatically goes into the zero star pile.

Finally, the author had a history of accusing people who negatively reviewed this book of hating Black queer joy, which I will fully admit that I am not Black and there’s probably some things in the book that I do not understand. However, that creates an interesting framing where this book is now not just a romance novel, but a quest for justice. When looked at from that perspective, the book is even weaker because of its blind spots when it comes to class and imperialism (I’ve seen community reviews who reference this really explicitly, sadly I can’t find them to link). Feyi spends her time in the Caribbean (Emezi doesn’t even bother picking an island) in the lap of luxury, without any insight into the way most locals there live. Considering the rampant inequality that this type of wealth creates in the Caribbean, this seems like a huge blind spot to skip, especially if you’re going to be marketing your book as something you have to like to have the right politics.

Oh, and the only character who speaks with a Caribbean accent/in some form of patois is Lorraine, who is somehow the only person even within her family to speak this way, and coincidentally is the only person who never likes Feyi and is shown to be antagonistic towards her. Do with that information what you will.

1. I hate uncertainty.

I’m sure you’re all stunned by this revelation. Stay tuned for more insights such as “people prefer to have money rather than not” and “murder is bad.”

It’s an obvious thing, but I want to state it again. I hate uncertainty. Unfortunately, being in this generation, in this era, in this economic system, means uncertainty has been a feature of my life longer than I’ve been an adult. Although my family wasn’t directly affected by the 2008 crisis (thank you AFL-CIO), in many ways, this was my first political awakening.

As my friend Ashton says, being in our generation means any time we try to be an adult, we get kneecapped in the patellas. Even when you go through a period of certainty, you’re always looking over your shoulder, waiting for the next hit to come.

2. Personally, it’s been a very uncertain year for me.

Last year was an uncertain one, so much so that I returned to my old habit of drawing tarot cards (even though I usually try to lean against the woo impulse as it usually takes me to an unpleasant place). The tarot cards weren’t reassuring. “Can at least one be right side up,” I remember pleading, and they were - the ones which, when right-side up, signify some kind of chaos.

Most of my adult life has been uncertain, such will happen when you graduate right before the COVID-19 pandemic and have a penchant to move a lot. I often make these uncertain choices for myself, and then moan about how I have no stability.

3. Other people help with the uncertainty.

I have a few friends who are also in the same uncertain position that I’ve been in all this year.

If I’m being honest, most of my friends are in uncertain positions, as I said above, function of our generation, but these friends are in similar vectors of uncertainty.

That’s another thing I’ve learned this year, how many types of uncertainty there are. There is the uncertainty of utter precariousness, the uncertainty of temporary stability only by living on the generosity of others such as a partner or family and not knowing when your independence comes back, the uncertainty of seemingly having it all together but waiting for the next blow, the uncertainty of seemingly having everything together but something inside feeling missing.

Having these friends meant a lot this year. The quiet check-ins, seeing if we have the same shade of anxiety. These friends (and a social media personality I follow who is weirdly in a similar boat) made this period of uncertainty feel easier.

Or maybe I’ve just accepted that uncertainty is a feature of my life now.

4. During this period of uncertainty, I signed up for the 1001 Albums Generator.

You set up an account and every day, following your personalized link, the website generates an album from the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die list. I check this website first thing when I turn on the computer every weekday, curious about what the soundtrack of the day will be.

Today was an album I’d never heard of, “The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter” by The Incredible String Band, a Scottish folk band from the 1960s that I’d never heard of but was apparently praised by Robert Plant.

The album was weird. The arrangements were beautiful, although they felt slightly off-kilter. The vocals were unsettling in the way that the best folk records are, because folk music is an inheritor of a music tradition which is alien to our receptors now. The lyrics were dream-like, one was written from the perspective of a minotaur.

I wondered what uncertainty the musicians went through. For however much we romanticize the 20th century in the idea that the generations before us had it better, there was the 70s oil crisis, the neoliberal austerity of the 80s, and before that, the shock of upending centuries worth of conservatism.

5. There’s so much left to learn.

That’s my point (although I do also really want to recommend the album - listen to it, it’s great).

Things like this are helping me cope with the uncertainty in my life. The books I’m lucky to discover, the music I am listening to.

There is so much left to learn in this world, perhaps my own future is the least important part of it.

Bok, ja se zovem Rebecca i moram priznati svoju ovisnost.1

Ovisna sam o Facebook stranici “Mamine tajne anonimne i javne.”

Nemam nikakve mamine tajne. Prije svega, zato što nisam mama.2Formalno nisam zapratila stranicu, ali svaki put kada mi njene objave izlaze na Facebook, pročitam cijelu priču do kraja, onda potrošim barem 10 minuta na čitanje svih komentara.

Nisam sigurna zašto mi algoritam ovoliko servira ove objave. Možda iza svega stoji isti razlog zašto mi društvene mreže serviraju “content” vezano za roditeljstvo na svim platformama—ove godine punim 29 i okružena sam mladim mamama, pa me društvene mreže pokušavaju šutirati u jajnike i dati do znanja da je sada red na mene. Drugi razlog je da je algoritam skužio koliko vremena provodim čitajući ove postove, iako pazim da ne ostavim nikakvu reakciju ili komentar. Mogu sakriti svoju aktivnost od prijatelja (možda) ali Facebook sve vidi. Facebook sve zna. Facebook je mjerio točno koliko sekundi je uzelo mojim očnim zjenicama da pročitaju zadnju objavu sinoć dok se Robert tuširao.

Koncept stranice je jednostavan. Ona objavljuje priče i pitanja koje imaju žene većinom iz Hrvatske, ali i širom našeg govornog područja. Pretpostavljam da dođu do ovih priča kada im pratiteljice pišu putem DM-a. Kao što priliči imenu stranice, priče se većinom odnose na roditeljstvo, ali i širih ženskih tema. Neke su samo ispovjesti, a neke su pitanja drugim mamama što da se radi u određenoj situaciji.

Stranica je ogromna. Ima nekoliko stotinu tisuća pratilaca. Popularne objave postanu klikbejt priče za lokalne tabloide. Čak sam i našla akademske studije koje su našle uzorak za anketiranje putem ove stranice.

Objave obično počinju sa “Molim anonimno.” Iako u imenu stranice stoji “i javne,” ne sjećam se jesam li vidjela ijednu objavu koja nije bila anonimna, i koja nije bila objavljena od strane nepoznatih administratora stranice.

Tu dolazim do jednog važnog pitanja. Jesu li ove objave istinite?

Vrlo vjerojatno bar neke od ovih objava nisu istinite. Neke priče sam viđala i po drugim stranicama sličnog tipa. Neke su presavršeno napisane da bi bile išta drugo nego dobro kalibriran bait, poput jedne objave koja je bila toliko stereotipičan primjer zle svekrve3 da sam za svoje mentalno zdravlje morala vjerovati da je dobra izmišljotina. Lanac proizvodnje i prenošenja tih priča mi ponekad nije jasna. Da li druge, manje stranice vide popularnu objavu na Mamine tajne pa je kopiraju da bi i one sudjelovale u algoritmu? Da li neki ljudi smišljaju dobre priče za objavu pa šalju moderatorkama i onda guštaju u komentarima? Možda sami admini stranice to izmišljaju zbog pažnje?

U ovoj dobi hiperrealizma4, možda nije toliko ni važno ako su ove priče istinite. Sami detalji priče nisu se možda stvarno desili osobi kojoj je napisala izjavu, ali činjenica da svaka druga objava ima nekoliko stotina komentara pokazuje da je osjećaj da je ta priča istinita dovoljno rezonantna da stotine žena diljem tzv. regiona se odnose prema toj priči kao da jeste istinita. One doživljavaju ove priče kao istinite, što je možda važnije od toga ako je ta priča u toj kombinaciji riječi i događaja stvarno istinita. Istinita je na nekom dubljem nivou, gdje sve ove ispovijesti obrađuju teme i doživljaje koji su poznati čitateljicama, čak i ako detalji priče su možda izmišljene.

Mamine tajne objavljuju priče vezane za skoro sve teme vezane za ženski život, majčinstvo, i život u obitelji. Odnosi sa muževom obitelji su vrlo česte teme za razgovor, kao i probleme u odnosu sa mužem. U trenutku kada pišem prvu verziju ovog eseja, zadnih nekoliko objava su vezane za spoznaja da anonimna autorka ne voli svog muža, dijete tinejdžer koje ne izlazi dovoljno, dijete tinejdžer koje izlazi previše, i organizacije domaće zadaće. Ima i više logističnih pitanja, vezano za odabir doktora, ginekologa, iskustva u porodilištu, skupljanje dokumentacije za uzdržavanje i slične stvari, ali te objave obično manje zavrti algoritam. Ima i povremene situacije anonimnih objava pitajući medicinske savjete, uz povremenu sliku dijeteta - na te objave obično žene se sjatu u komentare da ljutito upitaju anonimnu majku zašto ne ide kod doktora, nego pita na Facebook stranicu (obično se ne slažem sa Internet mobovima, ali u ovom slučaju su često u pravu).

Meni je čitanje ove Facebook stranice uvid u problematiku jednog sasvim drugog svijeta. Ovo su problemi s kojima se ja ne susrećem, i neke od tih problema (poput muža koji ne zna oprati vlastite gaće, pokušaji otuđivanja) su one za koje imam realne nade da se neću sresti čak i ako budem imala djecu. Čitam objave vojuristički, osjećaju se malo kao perverznjak, jer ja od tuđe muke dobivam nešto - možda zabavu? Možda nisam iznad onog malog osjećaja koji ima olakšanje čitajući o tuđoj nesreći, jer se ovo ne događa meni, jer sam ja birala boljeg partnera i jer sam, nadam se, pametnija? Možda nisam iznad onog malog osjećaja koji želi baciti pogled na onaj “drugi” svijet, onaj koji ne čita, koji ne citira Baudrillarda u svojim objavama, koji ne govori više jezika, da bi samu sebe zavarala kako mi je bolje zato jer ja jesam, nekako, inherentno, bolja? Plašim se da je moje impulzivno čitanje ove stranice i povremeno ironično podsmijavanje nije ništa nego buržujski osjećaj superiornosti. Neki ljudi gledaju tuđa dvorišta, automobile, garderobu, ili naglasak, ja gledam Facebook objave.

Možda je važno ispitati taj impuls u sebi, ali znam da to nije jedini razlog zašto čitam ove objave. Dok čitam, obično se ne osjećam superiorno, nego snuždeno i potišteno. Pojedine situacije koje opisuju žene u grupi su mi strane. Sveprisutan uticaj patrijarhata koji zapravo prožima njihove priče, i reakcije na iste, nije. Kada čitam Mamine tajne, sjetim se koliko je mizoginija zapravo sveprisutna i kreativna sila. Ugura se svugdje, i pojavi se svugdje, od vrlo očitih situacija poput nasilja do suptilnih situacija poput podjela kućnih poslova, brižnosti u vezi, i različite odnose prema ženskoj i muškoj djeci.

Učestalost mizoginije na našim prostorima se može vidjeti i u komentarima. Ne postoji muškarac u objavi koji može biti toliko grozan a da se ne nalazi bar jedna žena u komentarima koja će ga braniti, od izmišljanja razloga samo da bi muškarac u anegdoti bio u pravu do otvorenog pravdanje nasilja. Znam da postoji pravdanje za nasilje. Znam da nisu sve žene osviještene o patrijarhatu. Ali jedna je stvar to apstraktno znati, druga je stvar pročitati komentar mlade žene, “danas smo si mi žene krive jezikom što dobijemo batine.”

U aktivističkim krugovima Balkana, lako je osjećati se odsečeno od stvarnosti5 i postanem kivna na samu sebe koliko sam beskorisna. Imamo masovni marševi za 8. Mart svake godine koji okupljaju jedne te iste osobe svake godine i dobar dio populacije ne dotiče. Ja se osobno bavim se temama poput feminizma u književnosti koje prosječnu ženu ne dotiče, pišem tekst koji nitko neće pročitati, razgovaram sa drugim ljudima koji misle isto kao ja, a postoji ljudi oko mene koji ovako razmišljaju, i koji će ovako razmišljanje prenijeti na svoju djecu. Kako možemo doći do razgovora o temama poput ravnopravnosti na poslu, mijenanje obiteljskih odnosa, i slične ako još nismo savladali gradivo, “ej, loše je kad muž udari svoju ženu.” Koje životno iskustvo natjera mladu ženu da takav komentar ostavi nepoznatoj osobi i iskreno vjeruje u njega? Postoji li ikakav način da joj se dokaže suprotno?

Želim zagrliti sve ove žene. Želim ih zaštititi. Upravo sam pričala kako je nasilje loše, ali ponekad im želim ošamarati muževe.

Nisam komentirala. Nikad ne komentiram. Ne osjećam se kao da je to moje mjesto, jer ipak kao ne-majka ne mogu dati savjet majkama. Zanimljiva je ta podjela, majka/ne-majka. Strukturalizam je možda mrtav, ali ta binarna opozicija je preživjela. Ili si jedno, ili si drugo. Ako si ovo drugo, očekuje se da ćeš eventualno prijeći u ovu prvu skupinu, ali do tada postoji barijera. Nisi se dovoljno ostvarila, nisi ispunila svoju dužnost. Ne možeš nuditi savjete niti znanje majkama, čak i ako radiš u relevantnoj struci, jer majke posjeduju neko znanje koje je tebi ontološki strano. Kako tvoje prijateljice postanu majke, očekuje se da padneš u zadnji plan; više ne očekuješ da ti se javu, a tvoja postignuća više nisu važna. Isto tako, kada postaneš majka, onda si samo majka. Izgubiš znanja o drugim temama i više ne možeš biti inteligentna, kreativna, ili uspješna u svojoj struci. Dapače, očekuje se da to više ni ne želiš, jer sada si majka. Očekuje se da važan doprinos možeš dati samo kada se priča o nošama i zubićima. Nisi više dobrodošla u društvo ne-majki, koje se ni ne trude ostati u kontakt s tobom. Ili, ako i dalje izlaziš sa prijateljicama, ti si loša majka jer još uvijek želiš društvo ne-majke i ne-majčine aktivnosti, i to ti je milije od blažene večeri dok ti dijeca skaču po glavi.

Zato ne mogu komentirati, jer sam ne-majka a stranica je za majke, i ja sam u njihov prostor. Možda zato gledam, da mi stranica bude nekakav pogled preko te barijere, u problematiku i očekivanja tog drugog svijeta, bez da napravim taj nepovratan korak trajno preskočene barijere.

Ali nije to jedini razlog zbog kojeg ne komentiram. Ne komentiram jer me je sramota; ne želim da moji prijatelji vide koju stranicu pratim. Ta stranica bi trebala biti za neke druge žene.

Ili me je sramota jer bi moglo ispasti da dajem loše savjete.

Nisam komentirala na ovu objavu, ali druge žene jesu. Stotinu žena je komentiralo na ovu objavu. Većina komentara su bila ohrabrujuća, savjetovali ženi da riješi situaciju komunikacijom i da pokuša priuštiti dijetetu nezaboravno iskustvo.

Od mog impulsa ne-komentiranja6, zanimljiviji je impuls žena koje pišu objave i komentiraju ispod tuđih. Skoro svaka objava ima barem poneki komentar, a neke ih imaju i po stotinu. Ima komentara koji su zajedljivi, pasivno agresivni. Majke, kao i sva ljudska bića, ponekad liječe vlastitu agresiju na društvene mreže. Neke su pasivno-agresivne i hvale se kako nisu nikada imale probleme s kojima se susreće autorica objave. U svemu, a po najviše u roditeljstvu, postoji impuls natjecanja, pogotovo natjecanje u mučeništvu. Tako smo naučene.

Ali većina komentara je korisna. Žene uglavnom dijele pametne savjete, ono što je funkcioniralo u njihovom slučaju. Često dijele vlastita iskustva kako bi žena iza originalne priče vidil ada nije sama. Pomognu joj potvrditi instinct da ono što joj se događa nije u redu i da može bolje, da bi trebalo biti drugačije. Nude joj alternativne načine roditeljstva i života u obitelji, tamo gdje muški partner radi ravnopravnu podjelu kućnih poslova, gdje se granice sa širom obitelji postave i poštuju. Određeni postovi funkcioniraju kao “consciousness raising sessions” drugog vala feminizma, gdje kroz razmjenu ličnog iskustva se analiziraju neravnopravnosti i razmišlja o boljem svijetu. Čak i kad ne dođe do tog nivoa, dovoljno je kad ti kaže netko, “Desilo se i meni.”

Možda je to odgovor zašto žene pitaju u ovoj grupi, i zašto druge komentiraju. Ako nemaš gdje drugdje pitati, niti nigdje drugdje se obratiti, dobro ti dođu žene na internetu da ti kažu da nisi sama.

These are most of the books i read in March, I’m not counting academic books that I read for coursework (academic books that I read of my own volition count) or books that I read for the Ottoman history project I am working on (if you have book recommendations or would like to be interviewed for this project, please let me know).

Raleigh in Exeter: Privateering and Colonization in the Reign of Elizabeth I

I read this book for a YouTube project I’ve been planning for so long that my memory of the original is slowly fading. During my initial exploration of books about Queen Elizabeth I, I found that her popular portrayal tends to emphasize the fact that she didn’t initiate colonization and had no desire to colonize at all, which—does not super check out with my knowledge of the British monarchy. This old edited volume about Sir Walter Raleigh and the origins of privateering and North American colonization during Queen Elizabeth’s reign was interesting, if a little bit dated in some of the ways it was written (not sure all of the authors agreed that colonization is bad here). I found one article particularly convincing, which argued that colonization was closely tied to domestic problems and ideologies of the Tudor era, for example problems with land scarcity.

Afterlives - Abdulrezak Gurnah

I picked this book up at Znanje in Zagreb shortly after Gurnah won the Nobel Prize and it’s been sitting on my shelf through two moves. I read this after a series of other historical fiction novels in February and the difference is palpable. What I found most interesting is Gurnah’s use of point-of-view—the POV here is limited omniscient, switching between a few characters and depicting their differing reactions to the tumult of early 20th century Tanganyika/Tanzania. The tone of the POV is particularly masterful—Gurnah takes a dispassionate, nearly emotionless tone that makes the injustices the characters undergo feel more impactful than a tone which would have felt more emotionally manipulative, but also highlights their agency and potential for maneuver within the colonial order. I wish more attention would have been focused on the character Ilyas (the first) and his fixation on the Germans, but having him haunt the narrative was quite effective.

The Poyson Garden - Karen Harper

I love a good mystery novel to reset my brain a little bit, and historical mysteries in particular scratch that itch in my brain (reader, I was a kid obsessed with Sherlock Holmes pre-BBC series). This book, about Queen Elizabeth I acting as a sleuth to uncover a poisoning plot, didn’t do it for me despite scratching that itch. Turning Elizabeth into a swashbuckling heroine who breaks into castles, not just a sleuth, felt like going a bit too far. It also suffers from the fatal flaw I’ve noticed in a lot of fiction about the Tudor women—the authors tend to pick a favorite and really stick to it, which makes the story feel more like an argument for your fave than, you know, a good story

Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce

I know I said I wouldn’t include books I read for class, but I wanted to include this because I’m working on a paper about construction of gender in children’s literature and wanted to revisit this childhood favorite, following Alanna, a girl who disguises herself to be a knight. Although some of the themes are outdated (yikes at some of the Orientalism) I am happy to report that these books held up really well and I think are criminally underrated.

Planet of Slums by Mike Davis

I’ve read Mike Davis’s essays before, but I think this is his first book which I read and I’m going to do a project of reading his entire backlist. Davis’s excruciating examination of modern urbanism and the horrendous conditions which characterize the lives of the vast majority of city dwellers on the planet is good enough on its own, his detailed examination into the precise mechanisms that allow slums to form and expand feels mandatory.

The Lotus Empire by Tasha Suri

The final installment in a fantasy trilogy which manages to stick the landing, although the ending becomes a bit confusing and the themes of grief are a bit too heavily drawn. That being said, “the gods exist but they’re assholes” is one of my favorite speculative fiction tropes, and I really enjoyed the way Suri explored it throughout this series.

Passiontide by Monique Roffey

This novel, set in a lightly fictionalized Trinidad & Tobago, follows a feminist uprising after the murder of a Japanese steel plan player right after Carnival, the latest in an epidemic of femicides, which was based on real events. Roffey spends most of the novel focusing on the process of feminist organizing, which can verge into preachy territory (some of the conflicts between the women felt too easily resolved), but the way she depicts her characters, male and female, and the way that Caribbean patriarchy impacts them, is very well done. The passages from the perspective of Sora, the murdered woman, and the ending are absolute gut-punches.

This shows my own ignorance, but I hadn’t realized how strongly Lent and the different periods of Lent govern society in Trinidad, even coming from a Catholic country we don’t seem to think about Lent that often outside of Holy Week.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

The trouble with Sally Rooney for a lot of us is that you wind up reading about her a long time before you read her, and unfortunately that happened to me, which made it hard to form my own opinion of Intermezzo. That being said, my opinion of Intermezzo is that it’s a masterpiece, although the specifics of what I want to say, I find are curated from Twitter posts and Substack notes. The perils of the Internet, unfortunately.

The disjointed narration of Peter’s section features some sentences I wish I could reread over and over again.

The Political Unconscious by Frederic Jameson

The fact that I can’t remember anything about this is a sign that I should probably develop a better note-taking system for my PhD coursework.

I started thinking about alternative ways of knowledge when my friend Tana texted to ask me if I wanted to contribute any examples to a project for her master’s in social design. I’d already crocheted a granny square on the theme of the second shift at home for her previous thesis (read about it here: https://vizkultura.hr/savjet-pita-tana-jeic/) so at this point I’m used to changing the way I think about the world and questioning societal hierarchies at her prompting.

Once Tana introduced the concept to me, I kept finding it everywhere. It popped up in plenty of readings I was doing on postcolonial literature and feminist autobiography for my own PhD. I couldn’t stop thinking about it when I even picked up some reading for fun, and that’s why I come to you with this ridiculous argument - A Song of Ice and Fire can be interpreted as a series about the importance of alternative knowledge and outsider epistemologies.

What Is Alternative Knowledge?

Alternative knowledge is a term for epistemologies which are outside the dominant Western paradigm of knowledge formation, aka knowledge that is not validated by established power structures. While this type of knowledge is often dismissed as superstition, others argue that there is value to be found in sources of knowledge outside of Western science and academia. These can include oral histories, folk beliefs and customs, traditional medicines and practice, secrets passed on within the family, artistic practices, and more. Alternative knowledge is usually produced by people who have been marginalized by the gatekeepers of traditional knowledge production, such as women, indigenous people, and working class people.

Scholars and practitioners of alternative knowledge argue that there is value not just in included the voices of those excluded by those traditional narratives of knowledge production, but in covering the gaps that Western establishment knowledge production creates without even knowing it. In their overview of indigenous and alternative knowledges, Hickey & Austin1 argue that, “To know is to know contextually, according to cultural, social, symbolic and material encounters,” (85). Although Western science may consider itself universal, it is itself a product of its context, which means that it comes with built-in blindspots which have been critiqued by feminist and indigenous scholars. For example, debates around fire management in California, where Western practices dismissed traditional practices of ritual burning by the Chumash and other indigenous people to the area, show how alternative knowledge could potentially prevent wildfires.

Alternative Knowledge in A Song of Ice and Fire

One potential lens through which you can view A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin is a series-long argument for the importance of alternative knowledge.

The world which Martin is setting up is one in which all the “rational” actors of the world, the lords, nobles, and able-bodied fighting men, are fighting each other over the Iron Throne, which makes them unprepared for the real, otherworldly threat which is about to come for them in the form of the Others. Most of the power brokers in Westeros are not even aware that the Others exist or consider this a possibility because their epistemologies have no room for this information.

The only knowledge that this threat exists, let alone how to face it, comes from alternative knowledge such as stories passed down orally by elders (Old Nan), spiritual ways of knowing (visions), and indigenous knowledge (the children of the forest). Thus, Martin argues for the importance of his in-universe alternative knowledge. Without it, humanity would be well and truly doomed. Alternative knowledge sources are dismissed constantly in the narrative, but the wider narrative shows that they are an important way of passing on information. To some extent this is a product of the genre—where else would you find an accurate prophecy but a fantasy book, for example,—but the choice in who delivers this knowledge and holds on to it when the power brokers of this world forgets is intentional.

That is not to say that Martin was uncritical of the way knowledge can be distorted when passed down orally. In many ways, Sansa’s songs represent an alternative source of knowledge, passing on codes of behavior about how to be a lady. However, the songs pass on a patriarchal message that limits her ability to react accurately to the situation around her because she is mentally constrained in her reactions. In the same way, I was quite critical in my response to Tana’s prompt about alternative knowledge—the first experience that came to mind when she asked me about this was my older family members refusing reason and science while passing on patriarchal mindsets that continue to screw my generation over (you can’t convince my grandmother that it is not, in fact, the woman’s fault if there is no son). No sources of knowledge should be absorbed uncritically, but Martin’s work recognizes the importance of knowledge formed outside of the established class order.

Alternative Knowledge - The Prologue

Martin’s emphasis on the importance of alternative knowledge is immediately visible in the prologue of A Game of Thrones, where he winds up setting up many of the themes which will be relevant for the next books, including the terrifying presence of the Others which is promptly ignored by everyone else, so I wanted to finish this out with a close reading of sorts of this chapter.

The prologue begins with Gared and Ser Waymar Royce arguing over whether they should turn back after Will saw the camp of the wildlings they were tracking was dead. To bolster his argument for why the dead wildlings no longer pose a threat, Will says, “My mother told me that dead men sing no songs,” which I think is implied to be a Westerosi smallfolk axiom along the lines of “dead men tell no tales.” The choice of the word “song” is significant, given the title of the series itself, the relevance of songs within the plot of the series and as a recurring theme, and the fact that songs are often how alternative knowledge gets passed down, in the world of Westeros and in ours.

Lord Waymar’s response is interesting as well. He says, ‘My wet nurse said the same thing, Will, [...], never believe anything you hear at a woman’s tit.” Royce’s response is typical of Westerosi (and our) misogyny, immediately boiling down women to their breasts, ie., their function either as mothers or as sexual beings. He also crudely dismisses the knowledge contained in axioms and words of wisdom passed down often by women, who are the stewards of traditional memory. Waymar dismisses this alternative knowledge and, well, we all know how well that worked out for him in the end.

What’s interesting is that Waymar demonstrates his commitment to his own method of knowledge, a kind of Westerosi proto-scientific method (Ned and his little punnet squares were not the first examples of science coming to Westeros! Also everyone’s favorite doomed teenage minor hero is not just a completely dismissable failson, he has some good qualities). After his dismissive wet nurse line, he says, “There are things to be learned even from the dead,” meaning that he values his own observations as a field commander over second-hand information. Later, when Gared suggests that the wildlings froze to death, Royce brings up the fact that the Wall was weeping when they left it, meaning that nobody could have frozen to death, showing that he is testing their hypotheses against evidence.

Waymar isn’t completely roaming in the dark here. He has some form of knowledge and reasoning that he’s picked up about the Wall and how the Beyond the Wall works, and is a strong reasoner. The problem is that in his effort to prove himself on his first command (which, let’s talk about the class dynamics of the Night’s Watch and the fact that he’s automatically commander even though he’s a teenager who just arrived on the Wall), he is completely dismissing the accumulated knowledge shared by his subordinates. Whether he is doing this out of sincere belief in the inferiority of the tales of his social inferiors, or because he wants to prove himself as a commander by playing up the tough-guy act, is a bit unclear, but the result is the same.

As the chapter goes on, Waymar continues dismissing alternative knowledge shared by Gared and Will, in this case knowledge rooted in their class position. As peasants (not sure one can classify anyone in pre-industrial Westeros as working class), Will and Gared had more practical experience with skills Waymar needs in his role as commander, such as tracking. They also have been on the Wall longer so have more practical knowledge about conditions in the North and the job that they’re expected to do. Yet Waymar dismisses their knowledge, from Gared’s warnings that they should go back, to his insistence that they build a fire, to his instincts that something is wrong with the situation. Waymar’s own actions show his lack of practical knowledge, such as the choice of the wrong horse for a stealth ranging, his fancy sword, which has “never been swung in anger,” i.e., never been truly tested in a fight, and his inability to move through the forest without making noise. On some level, Waymar is probably aware of his own ignorance, yet he is not in a position where he can actually admit this or admit the importance of the alternative knowledge Will and Gared possess.

It’s possible that nothing would have been different had Ser Waymar Royce paid more attention to alternative knowledge around him (and we wouldn’t have an interesting beginning to the story if he had!) However, it’s interesting to think about how his experience serves as a valuable lesson for the other characters. Dismiss the stories “you hear at a woman’s tit,” or from the mouths of peasants, or passed on through stories and myths, at your own peril.

1. The first two months of the first semester of my PhD has mostly consisted of me reading stuff that I hope makes me smart while occasionally checking in with the professors supervising various independent study courses I’m enrolled in. Picture me reading stuff, turning a large dial that says “intellectual,” and occasionally looking back over my shoulder.

2. The benefit of this approach is that I’m now working my way through works that I see people mention and I’ve always wanted to read, but never made it to the top of my priority list. Today I finished Ways of Seeing by John Berger (and collaborators). He of the out-of-context quotes floating around the Internet which I’ve seen ever since my Tumblr days, so many that I thought I already knew what the work was about.

   Perhaps this was obvious, but reading out-of-context quotes is not even close to the force of Berger’s arguments on the underpinnings of class struggle in art. I thought I was someone who had a reasonably decent grasp of art, but now I feel as if I have a whole new language at hand to describe what I am seeing (I’ve also been dabbling in semiotics this year). I feel the urge to run to the nearest gallery of Old Masters (a rough thing to want while based in Niš) and point out everything I know, preferably while hauling my partner, a man who’s always had a healthy degree of skepticism towards looking at pictures of dead white dudes hanging up on walls,1 showing him a new way of looking at things.

   While the chapter on women in art is probably the most widely quoted from Ways of Seeing, the one that felt the most revelatory to me was the chapter on oil painting and its emergence along with the mercantile economy. It’s the kind of chapter that makes you go, “of course!” but still feels revelatory. What I value the most is Berger’s explanation of what makes masters like Rembrandt truly masters. I’ve memorized all those names, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, El Greco, but never really understood what set them apart from the rest—I appreciate art, but have no understanding of technicalities. Berger’s thesis, that the masters of oil painting were the ones who rejected the norms and values of the oil painting as form in service of mercantilism, gives me a new way of viewing images whose reproductions I’ve been staring at for nearly two decades.

   I guess I am a filthy Marxist.

3. For two summers in college, I was a tour guide for a company that brought groups of foreign high school students, mostly from Italy, to the United States, a job which was simultaneously the most entertaining and worst of my life.

   One of our stops was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of my favorite places in New York City since I was a kid, but that summer it became one of my least favorite.2

   One of my co-workers at this job was N., a working class Puerto Rican kid from a not-so-great area of Philadelphia, and after he mentioned that he’d never been inside a proper art museum, a few coworkers and I skipped our usual Starbucks break to take him to the European Masters gallery. N. was like a kid in a candy store, little more than a kid himself at the time (most of us were - who let us be in charge of teenagers??), stopping in front of paintings left and right to shout loudly about how he loved the colors, how realistic the hands were. N. couldn’t stop himself from leaning a little over the barriers, and a guard followed us around chastising him all down the hall. I wanted to tell the guard that it’s only a little over the line, there’s tons of people doing the same, just because the kid with the hand tats and the babyface is doing the same doesn’t mean you have to do this, but this guard is probably making little more than us, guarding stuff insured for more money than any of us will see in a lifetime, and in the end it was fine, but the museum itself is a space of class struggle, even when you have ostensibly free entry, like the rich men in the Holbein portrait, this is the city and its benefactors showing off its possessions: look what I have, look at where you are not allowed to walk.

4. I copy out this quote from Ways of Seeing and send it to my friend Đurica: “She [woman] has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.” Yesterday I went to an event series he organizes with a friend of his, Filokafe. This session’s topic was “Hell is other people.” Like most socio-philosophical discussions I’ve participated in, this one devolved into conversation on the purely psychological level, although the moderators did their best to add other ideas in (ever since I read my friend Laza’s article on psychology as a repression of true politics, I see it everywhere). Everyone was talking about why we care so much about why other people think about us and what we can do to stop thinking about what others think of us.

   I mentioned that the opinions of others, in certain dynamics, translates very directly to power. Young people are often derided for caring so much about what others think, but there is a very practical dimension to this, in my opinion, when you are still in school—one of the only avenues of power you have as a child is social standing among other children, and children are quick to wield that power. I also gave the example of my grandmother, constantly terrified of what other people think, because in her small village what someone else thinks of you will dictate how comfortable your life will be for the next few decades, especially when you wind up living in a household of women and depending on other people for help and gifts for certain aspects of your life.

5. One guy asked me if my grandmother was happy. I didn’t get a chance to answer, but this is what I wanted to say.

   From my perspective, my grandmother isn’t happy. In fact, the unhappiness of her obsession with what others think of her has led to unhappiness for others, as this anxiety over being perceived has infected her female descendants, bleeding into the edges of our vision.

   But the last time I asked my grandmother if she was happy, she smiled and said, “I’m never hungry anymore.”

6. I’ve been watching a lot of waterpolo. I am a woman of multitudes—the second there is any (non-American) sport on TV, I’m probably parked in front of it, mesmerized.

   Watching waterpolo is a bit like semiotics. It is an extraordinarily violent sport—essentially 14 people in a pool trying their best to drown each other. Yet, because of the nature of water, most of this violence is out of sight. We read it in the splashing and in the bloody scratches visible on the player’s bodies when they climb out of the pool.

   An occasional follower of the sport, I vaguely assume they are fighting it out for the ball in an unpleasant manner. But the referees know how to read the signs of the game—they blow the whistle, seeing the unsportsmanlike slap to the eye that I missed amid all the splashing.

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Strong Start:

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

This Arthurian retelling was the first book I read this year and it’s one of my absolute favorites. I did a more detailed review on my YouTube channel (shameless plug), but in short, I think this is one of the best fantasy retellings I’ve ever read. His medieval society is so different from typical medieval-esque literature, rooted instead in what is clearly painstaking research into different versions of Arthurian legends and early medieval Britain, detailing the twin influences of Christianity and paganism, the post-Roman malaise, different kingdoms, languages, and peoples populating the isles, all against the backdrop of the legends we love and one of the most compelling portraits of Arthur of all time. I might reread it again for the New Year’s 2026, it’s that good.

Book Club:

Niko nije zaboravljen i ničega se ne sjećamo by Mirjana Drljević

Missing girl thriller set against the backdrop of post-Yugoslav malaise, interrogating contemporary memory culture.

Anima: A Wild Pastoral by Kapka Kassabova

After multiple attempts I think I’m going to have to admit Kassabova is not for me.

My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci

The General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare

The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis

My favorite book club book of the year, I wrote a more detailed review earlier this year.

Call Me Esteban by Lejla Kalamujić

Red Water by Jurica Pavičić

One of the best books to come out of the post-Yugoslav space. Will probably foist this on every single person who asks me for a book recommendation.

Theory, Literary and Leftist:

Left-Wing Melancholia by Enzo Traverso

A really neat little book on the role of melancholy in the leftist struggle, along with The Bright Sword inspired an idea on acedia which I’m working on.

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

Started reading this because I wanted to be a good little feminist, finished it because the accuracy of its analysis of my mother and my relationship to her made me want to throw up.

Govorila sam istinu i ništa nisam prećutala, Govori Sodžerner Trut (a gift from Maja S.)

Anarchy is Possible by Peter Gelderloos

Not super convinced.

Exiles and Emigres by Terry Eagleton

A Substack I follow once noted that you need to read a lot more literature before you can understand theory and this was probably an example of that.

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf

I know, I know. One of my professors recommended this to me, and I wound up looking like such an idiot when I mentioned someone’s Twitter in an academic setting that I read it as penance.

Veils by Helene Cixous

The Feminist Killjoy Handbook by Sara Ahmed

Desire in Language by Julia Kristeva

Too ambitious a choice for this level of my academic journey.

How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco

Did a more detailed review here.

Aesthetics and Politics by Theodor Adorno

Marxism and Literary Criticism by Terry Eagleton

Beginning my PhD theory research.

Emily Henry Deep Dive:

Beach Read

People We Meet on Vacation

Book Lovers

Happy Place

Funny Story

Reading all of these back-to-back inspired my YouTube video on substance use in Emily Henry’s work.

Plugging the Gaps in My Canon:

Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens

Maybe a weird place to start with plugging my lack of Dickens knowledge, but I got it for a ridiculously low price at a book sale. Did you know this book was so popular in the 19th century there was a cake inspired by it? Somehow it’s fallen out of the canon now.

The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing

A really interesting psychological exploration of people in dystopian societies (better than another one which shall not be mentioned but appears in the last category in this list).

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

An absolutely perfect novel. Holy crap. I was blown away by how much I liked this book. I wish I had more articulate thoughts but I read 120ish books this year, I don’t have time to do more than two-sentence reviews.

Tijesna zemlja by Mate Balota

Because the canon I want to master isn’t just English. One of the seminal works in Istrian literature.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Are you even a girl with literary ambitions if you don’t read this.

The Short Novels of John Steinbeck (contained Tortilla Flat, The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, The Moon Is Down, The Pearl)

I started reading this then saw that tweet that said everyone reading Steinbeck is a recession indicator and got so scared I nearly put the book down.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

I read this for a PhD elective but I like it so much I’m not going to write my paper on it because I think it will ruin what is precious in it. So many ways people see each other yet do not see each other.

Sub-category: French canon

Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo

Also attempting to shore up my knowledge of French literature with this lesser-known gem by Hugo. I think I’m doomed to be his apologist forever.

Germinal by Emile Zola

Might have to pull a Brandon Taylor and read all of Les Rougon-Macquart.

Sido/Les Vrilles de La Vigne by Colette

Beautifully earthy memoir of the author’s family.

Une Femme by Annie Ernaux

Still in progress.

Swashbuckling Speculative Fiction

The Adventures of Amina al-Shirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

Chakraborty does it again, and this is even better than Daevabad.

The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday by Saad Hossain

A random e-borrow from my library that is one of the most imaginative fantasy books I’ve read in a long time. Hossain is a genius. I will be shouting about this book from the rooftops.

Dune by Frank Herbert

Reviewed it on my YouTube here.

Lost Gods by Brom

Borrowed from my brother Mark while he was visiting.

Subcategory: Le Guin deep dive

The Left Hand of Darkness

A masterclass in perspective and perception.

The Dispossessed

Thanks to Jelica for lending me both of these books!

Others in American Literature Coursework

This was my favorite elective that I did in my master’s degree and I read some of my favorite reads of the year by working my way through the reading list.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

I really loved this book and wound up writing my final paper on it, focusing on memory & justice within the novel and Native American literature as a whole.

Butcher by Joyce Carol Oates

Knew her by her tweets before I knew her by her work, and isn’t that a bit of a shame.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

James by Percival Everett

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Historical Fiction Novels That Should Have Been Memoirs or Creative Nonfiction

Not a broad category, but weird that it happened to me twice.

Kantika by Elizabeth Graver

A Long Petal of the Sea by Julia Alvarez

Jane Austen Readalong

Hosted all year by a newsletter I’ve referenced in the past, The Austen Connection, in honor of the author’s 250th birthday. Some were rereads, some I was reading for the first time.

Northanger Abbey (justice for Catherine Morland, unfairly maligned for having poor judgement)

Sense and Sensibility

Pride and Prejudice (still think it’s perfect)

Mansfield Park (I am an apologist for this book, but it works only if you read it as social commentary, not a romance)

Emma

Persuasion (now my favorite Austen

Marginalized Europeans

Adua by Igiaba Scego

A bristling novel about a Somali woman in Italy, I can’t believe this hasn’t gotten more attention.

History of Violence by Edouard Louis

Claustrophobic novel following the aftermath of the narrator’s rape and his return to his rural French Rust Belt hometown.

Recommended by Dua Lipa

Grief Is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter

I read this poetic exploration of grief, thought, “wow I should really read more of Dua Lipa’s book club picks,” then didn’t for the rest of the year. Maybe in 2026?

Indigenous Literature

Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

Imaginative, weird, and bristling with justice honed by anger, I’m still thinking about this book several months later.

My Place by Sally Morgan

(Still in progress but hoping to finish by the end of the year)

I’ve never read anything by an Aboriginal Australian, so I picked this up at the recommendation of my professor for a PhD elective.

Attempting to Educate Myself

The Fiume Crisis by Dominique Kirchner Reill

A book on the very weird period right after World War One when Rijeka was occupied by D’Annunzio.

The Pogues’ Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash: Jeffrey T. Roesgen

Part of the interesting 33 ⅓ series analyzing pivotal albums, on one of my favorite albums. In preparation for this essay.

Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity by Robert Beachy

Thanks to Jelica for this loan.

History of the Adriatic by Egidio Ivetic

A really interesting deep dive on the history of the Adriatic Sea. One of my interests is histories of the world from a maritime perspective (see previous readings on the Mediterranean, Amina al-Shirafi for a speculative fiction version of this).

Nazism and German Society, 1933-1945, ed. David Crew

I recommend this to anyone who is interested in how the Nazis managed to so completely take over German society. Thank you Professor Eddleston for your very flexible attitude towards copyright.

Sweet Invention: The History of Dessert by Michael Krondl

One of my other niche interests is food history, especially dessert history, so I really liked this popular history (thank you Lea for the recommendation!)

Reading Around the World

In pursuit of reading a book from every country in the world. Eventually.

Normal People by Sally Rooney (Ireland)

I’m very late to this, but Rooney is as brilliant as everyone says she is.

The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto (Japan)

After reading this book, I stopped buying translations from Serbian publishers I didn’t know. They just don’t invest nearly enough money in their work and I think that’s why I had trouble with this one.

Melancholy by Jon Fosse (Norway)

Attempting to get through Nobel prize winners as well. I barely understood this but I really liked what he was doing with the language.

Džamila by Chingiz Aitmatov (Kyrgyzstan)

Gorgeous collection of short stories/novellas set in a changing Soviet-era Kyrgyzstan.

Thriller/Mystery Kick

Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher by Kerry Greenwood

Adored the TV series, the novels are not as zippy but still good.

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

An excellent historical mystery set in 1920s Mumbai. If you’re in the mood for historical mysteries that go beyond the Agatha Christie paradigm, start here.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

Glitter in the Dark by Olesya Lyuzna

In the Woods by Tana French

The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips (see also: Reading Around the World, Pakistan)

Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon

A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas

The Burning by Maeve Kerrigan

These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean (not sure if this is a thriller but it is a caper)

Subcategory: Inspector Montalbano novels

Recommended to me by Danijela T., I couldn’t put these down. Camilleri manages to combine zippy plots with sardonic social commentary (once you get over the fact that he writes women the way you’d expect an Italian guy born in 1925 to write women).

The Shape of Water

The Terracotta Dog

The Snack Thief

Voice of the Violin

Excursion to Tindari

The Scent of the Night

Rounding the Mark

The Patience of the Spider

The Paper Moon

The Wings of the Sphinx

August Heat

The Potter’s Field

The Track of Sand

Random Anglophone Historical Fiction Written by Women

Not quite sure where to classify these, so here they go.

Loot by Tania James

An interesting read, but I wasn’t quite as blown away as some of the reviewers

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

I wanted to write this but hated the ending (spoiler: the countess sets up her servant to be murdered instead of her but that’s shown as a girlboss moment)

Planned Royal Diaries Deep Dive

I’m still planning on doing something with this, I promise.

The Royal Diaries: Elizabeth I by Kathryn Lasky

The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir

Terrible Romance Novels (Derogatory)

Season of the Witch by Sophie H. Morgan

Somewhere there is an essay or video essay about the weird prevalence of capitalism in the cozy witch romance genre.

Biggest Disappointments of the Year

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Like publishing Twitter in a trenchcoat.

Estoril by Dejan Tiago-Stankovic

Serbian historical revisionism in a trenchcoat plagiarized from Towles and Wes Anderson, but my fault for expecting something from mass market Serbian literature. Didn’t write the negative review of my heart because there’s no English language audience for it and the Serbian nationalists would hop on my grammar if I did it in BCMS.

Nula Nemo by Svetlana Gjoni

Not sure if I can call this disappointing if I had low expectations for this book I picked up at the flea market to begin with, but it did win a fairly prestigious Croatian literary award. Anyway I hated it and found it self-pitying and insufferable.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

What if stuff that happened to brown people happened to white people instead? And it won a Booker. I hated it so much that I’m planning a longer video review.

I know nobody’s going to read this until the end, but I like to have this as a record for myself.

It’s difficult to know where to start an essay about what, in my humble opinion, is one of the greatest albums of all time. Like Jeffrey T. Roesgen in his book about the album for the 33 ⅓ series, I could start with the cover, Theodore Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa with the faces of The Pogues superimposed on top of the groaning shipwrecked sailors. I could start with the name of the album, which countless wits have explained is a reference to the Winston Churchill quote about the “naval tradition.”

The Pogues start their album with “The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn,” a rousing song about slowly dying from the consequences of your own alcoholism (Blindboy has a great podcast about this song, praised by no less a man than Spider Stacey). The references to Irish culture go beyond the melody and Cuchulainn, a mythical Irish hero famous for his near-addiction to battle. Shane intersperses the story of a hard-drinking, hard-living working-class man who clashes with everyone from the fascists to bar owners to the Catholic Church with references to writers and singers past.

The other drinking standard on the album, at least until you listen to the lyrics, is “Sally MacLennane.” The rousing chorus is perfect for shouting along, but the story of a working-class Irish pub whose visitors leave their loved ones, die prematurely, and some drink themselves to death is not entirely pleasant. Based on the pub Shane’s uncle ran for Ford workers, where he used to work as well, the song doesn’t shy away from the real role that drink plays in the lives of the working-class Irish. It’s fun, it’s entertainment, and community, often the only way for people to unwind after long days at awful jobs, but also the path to destruction for many.

For all his own struggles with addiction, Shane’s songs never romanticized drinking. The songs have lively melodies, and tell fun stories, because drinking often means coming back with a story or two, but they also speak of the morning after, and the consequences of drinking on your life. If you could say that Shane romanticizes drinking culture, he does it the way that he romanticizes other ugly things he sings about such as war and sailing, by finding the beauty in the narrative and setting it to a jaunty tune. He never dismisses the ugliness inherent to these things, letting his lyrics speak to its complexity.

Shane is at his bleakest when writing about society’s underbelly. The second track, “The Old Main Drag,” is an immediate downer after “The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn,” singing about prostitution, exploitation, police violence, and rape from the perspective of a teenage arrival to London to the tune of a mournful dirge. The song doesn’t liven it up for the benefit of the leering voyeur, or speed up the experience for the sensitive souls. Instead, it drags on, forcing you to confront the knowledge of how the people you try to ignore are really living, written by someone who’s really been there (Shane spent time as a Dilly Boy as a teenager), and only got out by a stroke of luck.

Reflecting on society’s downtrodden from a historical perspective, “Navigator” is dedicated to the “navvies,” crews of usually Irish laborers that constructed major infrastructure projects across the British Empire. It was written by Philip Gaston, manager of Shane’s band The Nips and Pogues roadie. A lot of people don’t like this song, calling it the only stodgy tune on the whole album, and it’s true that the composition isn’t quite at the level of the others, but on this re-listen, it’s my favorite on the album. The line, “That in death if not life they’ll have peace while they sleep,” sticks with me for days. I think about the last few knuckles on my grandfather’s left hand, left somewhere in the mines of Raša. Shane saves all the gentleness his voice can muster for those who did not receive any during their life and were promptly forgotten after their deaths.

The original songs on the album fall thematically into a few categories, and the last is the futility of war. “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” is about an interaction between a drunken old veteran and an even drunker young man in a bar who is not interested in the gory stories that the veteran has to share. But it’s the gory stories of the veteran that stick with us, the listeners, who can’t stop thinking about the “labelled parts one to three” of the boys who came home and found nothing waiting for them. The figure of the old veteran stuck in his war days is a common one, often played for laughs by younger people. However, “A Pair of Brown Eyes” asks what it means to the old man to be stuck in a few moments from his youth. How can a few moments so drastically change someone’s life that they become stuck and unmoored decades later, and why do we continue to send new generations of young people to experience the same thing? Not honoring veterans doesn’t mean making performative parades of militarism, it means condemning young men over and over to the same torture.

The other original song about war uses the tried-and-tested Pogues method of singing a devastating story to an incredibly jaunty tune. “Billy’s Bones” has some of the fastest singing on the album, a change from Shane’s usual laconic style, so fast that you almost don’t realize that the song is about a street tough who joins a “peacekeeping” mission to the Middle East in search of adventure, then dies there. The whirlwind tempo of the song mimics the character of the impetuous rough in the title, who only thinks as far as the next fight, which is how he, like countless other young men before him, wound up dead in a war he most likely didn’t understand. Shane didn’t have sympathy just for the white soldiers of colonial armies that died in foreign places, he also had sympathy for their victims, with the line, “And there’s mothers crying all over this world/For their poor dead darling boys and girls.” Blink and you’ll miss it.

The stupidest debate that probably rages about The Pogues is if they’re an Irish or English band. Two things can be true: they are an English band who would not have formed without the rich punk scene in London. In his book, Roesgen quotes Philip Chevron as saying that they never could have been an indigenous Irish band.

However, you cannot reduce the Irishness of The Pogues. Only Philip Chevron was born in Ireland, but other members besides Shane had Irish roots, such as Cait O’Riordan. Let’s not forget that this was a time when in the UK, it absolutely mattered if you were of Irish descent. “There has always been a parallel Ireland,” Bob Geldof wrote of The Pogues. “This is a world inhabited by those whom Ireland has failed or, as in my case, failed as the Irishman Ireland wished us to be.” The large Irish diaspora, dispersed by waves of famine and misery, making up the underbelly of the Anglo world until in what must have come as a surprise to some of its members they began to be assimilated in the later half of the 20th century.

The Pogues are an Irish diaspora band in a way that feels familiar to any diaspora kid, even if you’re from a different origin point. Besides the song content, the creation process is familiar to any diaspora child. Shane’s desperate absorption of Irish folk myth, music, and tradition is familiar to any child of immigrants who never quite fit in in the old country or the new.

Take the only instrumental on this album, “Wild Cats Of Kilkenny,” (okay, the digital version has a bonus track, “A Pistol for Paddy Garcia”). The song could only be written by an Irish diaspora band. The title is a reference to an old Irish folk tale, the contours of the song are similar to Irish trad music, but the melody and arrangements borrow heavily from other traditions such as Spaghetti Westerns. Respecting tradition but being willing enough to break it could only be done by a band that loved its heritage yet was placed outside of it.

Besides one standard from Ireland, “The Gentleman Soldier,” the cover songs are from places that have large Irish diasporas, playing tribute to the lives they lived there .”And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” Eric Bogle’s unrelenting anti-war standard, cuts through the nationalist mythologies of World War One, preferirng to speak about the experience of the mostly poor men (some of Irish origin) who died there. “Jesse James,” the only song on this album where Spider Stacey sings lead, is an old folk song from the United States portraying Jesse James as a Robin Hood-style folk hero, even though James was a slave-owning Confederate-sympathisizing murderer.

The song Spider, Jem, and crew will probably have to perform until they die or their fingers fall off is “Dirty Old Town,” originally written by Ewan MacColl. MacColl was not Irish (his parents were Scottish, and the surname is a stage name), the town he is singing about was Salford, not an Irish town. Yet the British mill towns and factories were populated by laborers from Ireland and other countries, who along with the local working class kept the belching furnaces of the empire running.

But my favorite cover on the album is “I’m A Man You Don’t Meet Every Day,” a Scottish or Irish ballad. Scotland was another destination for Irish emigration, and the cultures are often intertwined. Cait O’Riordan sings this one, and the music hall song takes on an ambiguously sinister hue in her interpretation, where a fanciful boast of a rich landowner out drinking now becomes a subtle reminder of the power he has over his audience and drinking companions.

The choice of covers on this album reveals another aspect of The Pogues that I think people tend to overlook. After his death, there’s been a tendency to portray Shane as a lone genius (I’ve been guilty of it a little in this essay). However, the project was a collaborative one, both within the band (think about “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” without Spider’s harmonies, or this album without Phil Chevron’s rapid-fire guitar playing, or so many songs without Jem Finer’s co-writing and arrangement contributions) and outside of it. The Pogues were something completely new, but also situated themselves firmly within the tradition of the bands that they loved. These covers and their frequent collaborations were a way of bringing their musical lineage to a new audience.

We can debate if The Pogues are Irish or English, but ultimately it doesn’t matter, besides conversations about the influences on their music. Roesgen quotes Jem Finer on the marriage between folk and punk the band played, explaining that it makes sense because both folk and punk are about the common man’s struggle against the system. Most of the band had working-class origins, and most of the songs are about the working class. The downtrodden, abused, and exploited, both Irish and not, were the subjects of Shane’s writing and interest.

That working class legacy seems to have been erased in later Celtic punk. Maybe the only thing I don’t like about The Pogues is how many inferior bands they’ve spewed in their wake. There are too many modern Celtic punk bands that look at the Pogues as a “paint-by-numbers” form to copy. They hear the rowdy songs and decide to sing about drinking, they hear the songs about war and decide to sing about the glory of the nation in war. They try to mimic an Irish accent as close as they can, so focused on this mimicry that they never hear what Shane is actually singing. The complex stories, the misfortune behind the happiness, and most of all, the deeply political intention of the songs, their concern with the working class and its discontents, are gone. Let’s all bash tambourines on our heads instead.

I wish I could do more justice to this album, but to really do a deep dive on every single song would require an entire novel. As soon as I think I grasped all the literary references and callbacks to other musicians that Shane wrote, I found more. Shane was a brilliant, layered songwriter, and highly intelligent, something that the commentariat seems to have discovered only after he was dead. The musicians behind him were no less brilliant at what they did. We are all better off for having this album in our lives.