How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed
- Book Review,
by Slavenka Drakulic
From Library Journal
Drakulic's fine collection of essays draws strength from her keen powers of observation and sensitivity to her readers' interests. Her achievement is to depict the starkly common identity of everyday life in socialist Eastern Europe before its unlamented loss becomes irretrievable. It is a world in which party authority can create the "sudden invisibility" for an offending journalist, where public buildings share a "shabbiness and color of sepia," and one that makes the post office an impenetrable "institution of power." The essays are also about people, about the obsessive " communist eye " (italics original) disturbed by the injustice of New York's homeless yet neurotically envious of those wearing fur coats at home. The tragic irony lies in the book's title. Hoarding material objects enabled people "to survive communism," but hoarding wartime memories and the inability to "let the dead be dead" may destroy the author's native Yugoslavia. Recommended for all public and academic libraries.- Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ.-ErieCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A poignant and truthful look at what living under Communism was really like, by Croatian journalist and novelist Drakuli. The author, daughter of a former partisan who was a high- ranking Communist army officer, was never a member of the Party herself. Here, she conveys the reality of life under Communism through ordinary but telling detail: the wonder of a man who, for the first time in his life, was able to eat a banana--and ate it skin and all, marveling at its texture; Draculi's own bewilderment at finding fresh strawberries in N.Y.C. in December; the feel of the quality of the paper in an issue of Vogue; the desperate lengths to which women under the Communist regime would go to find cosmetics or clothes or something that would make them feel feminine in a society where such a feeling was regarded as a bourgeois affectation. Drakuli dismisses the argument that Western manufacturers have manipulated these needs: ``To tell us that they are making a profit by exploiting our needs is like warning a Bangladeshi about cholesterol.'' Though herself a feminist, she willingly turns amusing in describing the uncomprehending questions sent to her by a New York editor who asked about the role of feminism in political discourse in Eastern Europe, when there was no political discourse and when feminists were--and apparently still are--regarded as enemies of the people. ``We may have survived Communism,'' Drakuli writes, ``but we have not yet outlived it.'' To the author, Communism is more than an ideology or a method of government--it is a state of mind that is yet to be erased from the collective consciousness of those who have lived under it. A sometimes sad, sometimes witty book that conveys more about politics in Eastern Europe than any number of theoretical political analyses. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister
Despite its title, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed is not a funny book. This informative, passionate, articulate series of essays looks at how communism in Eastern Europe affected - and still affects - the lives of women. Written for a Western audience, these essays explore the lives of individual Eastern European women through the details of their days, because, as Salvenka Drakulic states, "Life, for the most part, is trivial. It was this relationship between political authority and the trivia of daily living, this view from below, that interested me most. And who should I find down there, most removed from the seats of political power, but women." She takes mundane topics such as laundry, tampons, make-up, toilet paper, shared apartments, and soup and allows the larger implications to ripple out until the reader can see an entire system, a way of knowing and believing. Describing the wide-spread attitude that created the stockpiles of plastic bags, medicine, fabric, and food in her grandmother's cupboards she comments: "If the politicians had only had a chance to peek into our closets, cellars, cupboards and drawers - looking not for forbidden books or anti-state material - they would have seen the future that was in store for their wonderful plans for communism itself. But they didn't look." Accessible, fascinating, and extremely timely, these essays offer an understanding of communism lived on a daily basis. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.
--New York Times Book Review
"A thoughtful, beautifully written collection of essays...blending provocative analysis with the texture of everyday life."
"An invaluable account of the cumulative weariness of the soul brought on by daily life in an Eastern European country."
Book Description
Hailed by feminists as one of the most important contributions to women's studies in the last decade, this gripping, beautifully written account describes the daily struggles of women under the Marxist regime in the former republic of Yugoslavia.
About the Author
Slavenka Drakulic's work has appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, the New York Times, Time, and The New York Review of Books among many other publications and is widely translated throughout the world.Her books include the novel Holograms of Fear and her most recent collection of essays, The Balkan Express.She lives in Zagreb.
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