Drakulic: How We Survived Communism - Hardcover

Drakulic, S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393030768 ISBN 13: 9780393030761

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co., 1992

Synopsis

The Berlin Wall has fallen, the Iron Curtain is sundered; in a geopolitical instant Marxism is erased from the blackboard of history with little pain and minor cost. A delusion of course, as Drakulic--a leading Yugoslavian writer from Croatia--proves in this brilliant work of reportage filtered through personal experience.

About this title

Review:

An invaluable account of the cumulative weariness of the soul brought on by daily life in an Eastern European country. --Vivian Gornick, critic and essayist (National Book Award nominee)"

Seldom has such a narrative been so spirited and immediate. --Christopher Hitchens"

She is a writer and journalist whose voice belongs to the world. --Gloria Steinem"

A thoughtful, beautifully written collection of essays...blending provocative analysis with the texture of everyday life. --New York Times Book Review"

Not only the first ever grassroots feminist critique of communism, it s one of our first glimpses into real peoples lives in pre revolutionary Eastern Europe. My world is twice as large as it was before I read this book. [Drakulic] is a brave, funny, wise and wonderfully gifted writer. --New York Times-bestselling author Barbara Ehrenreich"

"She is a writer and journalist whose voice belongs to the world."--Gloria Steinem

"A thoughtful, beautifully written collection of essays...blending provocative analysis with the texture of everyday life."--New York Times Book Review

"An invaluable account of the cumulative weariness of the soul brought on by daily life in an Eastern European country."--Vivian Gornick, critic and essayist (National Book Award nominee)

"Seldom has such a narrative been so spirited and immediate."--Christopher Hitchens

"Not only the first ever grassroots feminist critique of communism, it's one of our first glimpses into real peoples' lives in pre-revolutionary Eastern Europe. My world is twice as large as it was before I read this book.... [Drakulic] is a brave, funny, wise and wonderfully gifted writer."--New York Times-bestselling author Barbara Ehrenreich

From the Back Cover:

Hailed by feminists and scholars as one of the most important contributions to women's studies in recent decades, Slavenka Drakulic s gripping, beautifully written account newly reissued in paperback describes the daily struggles of women under the Marxist regime in the former republic of Yugoslavia.

In this provocative, acutely observed essay collection, renowned journalist, novelist, and non-fiction writer Slavenka Drakulic writes with wit and heart about her experiences under communism as well as those of other Eastern Europeans, primarily women, who lived and suffered behind the Iron Curtain. A portrayal of the reality behind the rhetoric, her essays also chronicle the consequences of these regimes: The Berlin Wall may have fallen, but ideology cannot be dismantled so quickly, and a lifetime lived in fear cannot be so easily forgotten.Many of the pieces focus on the intense connection Drakulic discovers between material things and the expression of one s spirit, individuality, and femininity an inevitable byproduct of a lifestyle that, through its rejection of capitalism and commoditization, ends up fetishizing both. She describes the moment one man was able, for the first time in his life, to eat a banana: He gobbled it down, skin and all, enthralled by its texture. Drakulic herself marvels at finding fresh strawberries in N.Y.C. in December, and the feel of the quality of the paper in an issue ofVogue.As Drakulic delves into the particular hardships facing women who are not merely the victims of sexism, but of regimes that prevent them from having even the most basic material means by which to express themselves she describes the desperate lengths to which they would go to find cosmetics or clothes that made them feel feminine in a society where such a feeling was regarded as a bourgeois affectation. There is little room for privacy in communal housing, and the banishment of many time-saving devices, combined with a focus on manual labor, meant women were slaves to domestic responsibility in a way that their Western peers would find unfathomable. From this vantage point, she provides a pointed critique of Western feminism as a movement borne out of privilege.

How We Survived Communism and Even Laughedis a compelling, brilliant account of what it was really like to live under Communist rule and its inevitable repercussions."

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0393030768
• ISBN 13: 9780393030761
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 189