I met Slavenka Drakulić about 15 years ago while writing my PhD on everyday life in women’s autobiographical writing. I asked my doctoral supervisor, Croatian humanities scholar Andrea Zlatar, if she could recommend writing by women on aging. She couldn’t get it out of her head, but she said author Slavenka Drakulić recently asked her the exact same question. Slavenka continued to write on this subject in a long essay “Cheating with a Stranger” and in a collection. The Invisible Man and Other Stories. Our discussion about female aging was just the beginning of an intense and fascinating relationship.
Slavenka and I had a common interest in literature and women’s everyday life. Quote from her book for a long time How we survived communism and even laughed about it This was written on my wall. “A woman’s life is by no means glamorous, in fact it is ordinary, and it has so much to say about politics that theoretical political analysis has no limits.” She often considered her favorite authors, Marguerite Duras and Irena Vrkulyan, as role models, but more recently she has thought of Zeruya Shalev and Annie Ernaux. She also loved the work of Walter Benjamin. Childhood in Berlin around 1900 and placed it on her desk.
As soon as we met, Ms. Slavenka asked me if I could help organize the archives. When she opened the cabinet in her study, she found it packed with disorganized papers. Old, yellowed reviews of books in various languages, interviews with and by her, piles of literary magazines, videotapes, CDs, large and small photographs, faded letters on fax paper, slides. Slavenka I wrote a lotHer books have been translated into approximately 30 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Armenian, and Persian, and have received many reviews. Organizing the archives has been a multi-year adventure and a dynamic work in progress.
When she first showed me the archives, she looked at the pile of documents, sighed, and said, “I came to the conclusion that nothing would happen unless I organized it myself.” I learned a lot from her, but this is probably the most important thing. There’s never enough time, so do everything you can and don’t wait for anything or anyone. Her long illness had sharpened her awareness of mortality, and writing was always her priority. She often said, “Life exists to be portrayed.” With Slavenka, everything ended up being text. Everything she had in mind became a novel, an essay, a newspaper article, or a combination of the three.
I discovered her collection in the early 2000s when I was a young feminist with children and worried that my intellectual life would become overwhelming. The deadly sin of feminism (1984) – one of the earliest contributions to feminism in Eastern Europe (unfortunately still only available in Croatian). The essays are surprisingly relevant. The first was written in 1979, the year I was born, and advocates the introduction of compulsory sex education in schools. This was a time when notions of gender performativity and language construction were heavily promoted, and feminism tended to forget women’s biological determination. I thanked Slavenka for writing concretely about the realities of women’s lives. She analyzed patriarchy in everyday life, including women’s magazines, children’s picture books, political speeches, and domestic violence.
She has always said that women must actively defend their reproductive rights and understand the dangers of politicians and governments around the world who seek to stifle women’s liberation by returning women to their “natural” caregiving roles. When she talks about this, she says, with a twinkle in her eye and energetic hand movements, and an occasional laugh, that maybe women don’t protest because things haven’t gotten bad enough yet. She was worried that the woman would wake up too late. The Handmaid’s Talewhen they no longer have a voice.
In 2020 she published a new edition. The deadly sin of feminismThis included her recent essays on women’s issues. In the afterword, Slavenka explained that she wanted to publish the new edition because “if I had expected better conditions, more respect, greater equality, it would not have happened.” On the contrary, patriarchy is resilient and women, due to their ability to bear children, can become victims of nationalist or religious ideologies overnight. This book deals with these issues in a simple and concrete way, making it an ideal read for those who don’t normally read theoretical or feminist texts.
In today’s world, where conflicts are constant, war is the same everywhere (2022) – a collection of essays written over nearly 30 years – is equally important. But my favorite of Slavenka’s books is her body body (2012) and they would never hurt a fly (2004). The former explores the motivations of people who donate organs to strangers, and the latter is a book of essays about “ordinary people” who become war criminals. We often talked about how these two books revealed the contradictory sides of humanity: the unimaginable good and the unimaginable evil that humans are capable of.
they would never hurt a fly Although translated into many languages and often discussed and quoted, her body body It didn’t get much attention. Slavenka believed that stories about war criminals were easier to read than stories about organ donors. It was done They may be, but they’re probably not altruistic enough and that makes us uncomfortable.
I envy Slavenka for writing so quickly. As a literary critic, this is the first time that writing a book review takes me a long time, filling my notebook with notes and reading tons of books. Slavenka, on the other hand, was able to write a short, clear text on a very complex subject in just two hours. This fascinated me. She was a constant reader, almost voraciously, following new authors as well as national and international newspapers and magazines. There was a stack of books next to her bed. She likes to underline them and, to her horror, even folds the corners of the pages (until a few years ago, she was obsessed with colorful sticky notes and used them a lot).
Slavenka was particularly interested in new books by young women writers and journalists. She also reviewed their books. This is highly unusual in Croatia’s small cultural community, which is willing to criticize but reluctant to praise. Slavenka paid little attention to such things. She knew how important it was to look beyond the borders of a small country – to read not only the classics, but also the most interesting and innovative contemporary writers, journalists and critics. She has published essays in prestigious magazines around the world and published books with major publishers such as Penguin USA. When you consider the best, mediocrity is no longer an option.
As expected, Slavenka was a complex person. She may be stubborn and emotionally demanding. But precisely because of her stubbornness, she was able to overcome serious illness for many years and continue to write tirelessly. At the same time, she generously shared her knowledge and actively supported other writers. She encouraged me to write and speak publicly and congratulated me on every article and book I published, but she never missed an opportunity to point out that I wrote too much. She treated many other writers the same way. She also showed deep compassion for various people suffering from illness and helped them both practically and financially.
It was no surprise that last year the Croatian Journalists Association awarded her with the Lifetime Achievement Award. She appreciated it because it was from a colleague and the Croatian cultural world often excluded her. But more important to her than the award was the reaction of readers to her book. I remember that something very moving happened. That was at the end of 2025, after Slavenka published a collection of short stories. what we don’t talk about (2024) in Zagreb. The audience applauded for a very long time. In fact, people couldn’t seem to stop clapping. They thanked Slavenka not only for this book, but for her life’s work and the deep mark her writing has left on all of us. She was deeply moved.
Slavenka was resourceful, curious and genuinely interested in people and the world around her. She valued truth, personal and social responsibility, and energetically sought a more just and civilized society. She was a perfect example of Gramsci’s “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.” She was fond of saying, “An optimist is just an ignorant pessimist,” and yet she behaved well Be optimistic. She continued to move forward every day, enthusiastically speaking and writing about new books and new topics. It was never difficult for her to write one more article about abortion, one more about abused women, one more about society’s fascist tendencies, and then one more. When her archives are finally made available to the public, we will be able to continue researching her and pick up where she left off.
Much more could be written about Slavenka, but I can almost feel her looking at me and shaking her head in disapproval, because I admired her so excessively and without restraint. I hear her say, “Cut it in half!”
In the collection from a few days ago, Why I Didn’t Learn to Cook I arrived at the bookstore. She was looking forward to it very much. It’s an interesting combination of text and image, where an autobiographical story about cooking becomes a springboard for examining the social conventions (one might even say indoctrination) that it is “natural” for women to enjoy cooking.
I still can’t believe she’s gone. What hurts me the most is the reality that I can’t show or tell her anything anymore – I can’t send her this text. But her books stare down at me from the bookshelf. They continue to encourage and inspire me.
Source: Eurozine – www.eurozine.com
