Author Writes Without Borders

Controversial Slavic author Dubravka Ugresicc shared how her experiences traveling throughout the globe has affected her writing and warned against the strict categorization of writers by their nationality in an address at the Barker Center on Friday afternoon.

Despite the dreary weather, the event attracted a diverse audience of about 30, including Harvard professors of Czech and Polish Languages and Literatures, undergraduate and graduate students, and fans of Ugresic’s works from outside of the Harvard community.

Ugresic, who taught briefly at Harvard in 1992, was invited as the first guest in a series of seminars hosted by the Department of Slavic Studies.

The author, who currently resides in Amsterdam, said that her extensive travels have left her with a sense of cultural “schizophrenia and split-personality.”

“I am Bulgarian, Dutch, American, Yugoslavian, Serbian, Macedonian, Bosnian, Slovenian, Croatian, European, Swedish, Mexican...but that is not enough—give me more identities,” said Ugresic, whose collection of essays “Nobody’s Home” was recently translated into English.

Svetlana Boym, a professor of Slavic languages and literatures and comparative literature, introduced Ugresicc as a brave female journalist, writer, and intellectual who, “through humor, through playful writing, offers critical commentary on Croatian nationalism.”

In 1991, the dismal conditions of war-torn Yugoslavia motivated Ugresic, a native of that country,c to write critical pieces on the futility and criminality of war. Her anti-war pieces, which were deemed anti-nationalistic, subsequently made her a target for Croatian media and political figures. Ugresicc eventually left Croatia in 1993.

She categorized her works as “patchwork fiction,” a combination of personal memoir, critical commentary, and fiction.

Ugresic also told the crowd that the “luggage of labels”—how she referred to the literary market’s tendency to label writers based on their nationality—bogs down literary text and its meaning. Identifying labels also discriminate against a text, she added.

Alexander M. Groce, a first year graduate student in the department of Slavic Studies, said he found the talk engaging.

“I thought it was very interesting, especially when she mentioned this idea of this international writer who can change things on the surface, like her passport, but is still intrinsically conflicted,” Groce said.

The series of Slavic Literature and Cultural Seminars will continue throughout the 2008-2009 academic year with other well-known Slavic authors.