Recently, I had a great pleasure to read the first novel written by Jelena Angelovski, entitled ‘Mika’. This novel left a huge impression on me, given that I am a mum raising two bilinguals away from my home. I found many parallels in my family life and Mika’s family life.
Jelena and I had a beautiful conversation in Serbian that is now published in the videos section of my blog. I’ve also asked Jelena to answer the questions in the written format, so that I can translate them into English*. I believe that what Jelena has to say will be interesting and useful to many parents raising bilinguals away from home, regardless of the languages involved in their children’s upbringing.
Jelena, thank you!
L: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
J: I was born and raised in Pančevo, Serbia. I graduated in Serbian literature and language with generalliterature from the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade. Having graduated, I returned to Pančevo where I taught Serbian in the elementary school I myself attended.
Simultaneously with the teaching job, I continued my studies in literature. Both my MA and PhD are on the topics of Serbian 20th century prose. At the same time, I regularly followed contemporary literature, wrote summaries for literary magazines and worked as a mentor to talented youngsters.
Aside from work, this was the time when my children were born, two daughters and one son, whose age difference is three to four years.
Five years ago, I applied for the job of teaching Serbian language abroad. I got a job post in Zurich. Ever since, my family have lived in Switzerland.
The Serbian language school abroad is organised in mixed groups. Each group has lessons once a week and they usually comprise of six to seven students. Our teaching programme is organised in chunks. Us teachers, by following the existing curriculum, have the freedom of shaping the classes to fit our students. The contents of the classes always revolve around the three school subjects that are part of the curriculum.
L: Could you tell us a little bit about the novel?
J: The novel is about a boy, Miroslav Antić. His nickname is Mika. He is born in Serbia, but is growing up in Switzerland. As it is often the case, his problems are not getting resolved and are piling up – first he has a problem with his best friend, then the school bullies, his teacher and her requests, his mum and dad who are going through their own crisis, and finally his grandma and grandpa who are organising an uprising in Serbia. His problems will eventually be resolved, in the same way they emerged. However, during the process of resolving his problems Mika will learn some important things. I was primarily interested in those things he learns along the way.
L: How did you create Mika’s character? Was he inspired by anyone?
J: Vladislava Vojnović, the editor in chief of the edition Azbučnired (Alphabetical order) in the publishing house Službeni glasnik, our prominent writer and playwright, asked me to write a novel about a Serbian child who is growing up abroad. She did this knowing that I know these children really well. Indeed, my three children share Mika’s destiny in many ways. In addition, I am in daily contact with another twenty boys and twenty girls of Mika’s origin, who are growing up in a similar environment to Mika’s. To reword Mika Antić, the poet, Mika is in all of them.
L: Personally, I think Mika will be liked by people of different profiles and different age groups. Who did you have in mind as Mika’s target audience?
J: I wanted to write a novel for the most demanding audience – teenagers. As an audience, they are not demanding in the same way they are as children. When it comes to literature, they are demanding because parents can no longer easily influence their reading choices. At the same time, their own literature taste is not formed yet and they haven’t found what they like. Therefore, they often decide they do not like – anything.
While writing this novel I also thought about myself as a parent. I like reading to my children, however, I am horrified by boring books for children. The time we dedicate to reading to our kids before they fall asleep, is the time when us parents need some additional stimulation to successfully go through this last task of the day. Even turn it into something enjoyable. This is why I put a lot of references, jokes even, that will communicate with parents more so than with children.
L: The relationship of Mika’s parents left a strong impression on me. However, the question I want to ask the most is: Why is Mika’s mum dissatisfied?
J: By talking about Mika’s parents’ problems, I also wanted to start talking about the challenges immigrants of my generation face. I consider this killing two birds with one stone. On one hand, I wanted to show to my young readers that what may be happening in their home is neither too unusual nor the end of the world. I wanted to show that this can happen and is happening to many families. On the other hand, I also wanted to show to my grown-up readers that they are not alone and that the experiences of the new immigration wave are slowly going to start being present as a topic in the contemporary Serbian literature. I would like to think that the novel ‘Mika’ is a small part of this process.
To answer your question directly – Mama is generally satisfied with her choice to move countries. She unambiguously sees advantages of this decision for the whole of her family, including herself. However, she has one set of values many of us share, that is not easy to simply transplant into the new environment. She has difficulties in recreating her own life. I tried to avoid the cliché of her feeling as a foreigner – on the contrary, she doesn’t feel like one. However, she is the professor of Latin. For the whole of her life she has been studying and earning new diplomas and certifications, thinking this is enough and that everything else will fall into its place. When she found herself in the new environment where she needed to start from scratch and invest all her life’s potential into her family’s welfare, she somehow got blocked and carried on repeating the phrases she learnt in seminars.
L: Recently, I realised I am raising not only bilingual, but also bicultural and biliteral children. However, a person can be bilingual without being bicultural and biliteral. You incorporated all of these three things into the novel: the names of the chapters follow the letters of the Serbian alphabet; some common expressions as well as slang of the Serbian language are present throughout the book ‘Šta te se tiče?’ (And why do you care?); ‘(Vrisnem) ko Damjanov zelenko’ (Shout loudly**), ‘Ćale i Keva su u ćorci…’ (Serbian slang for ‘Mum and Dad are in prison’), and finally culture: the poet Mika Antić, the band Partibrejkersi, the instrument tambourine, activism and protests.
L: How important are the alphabet, the language and the culture to you and to what extent do you think they are connected?
J: The answer depends on what the end goal of language learning is. If a person is learning Serbian as a foreign language, for the same reasons they would learn any foreign language, that person doesn’t necessarily need to be familiar with the culture. However, when it comes to Serbian children who are growing up and being educated abroad, I personally do not see the point of learning a language separately from its alphabet and the culture. Our aim is to enable the children to ’navigate’ successfully through their language of origin in different contexts – from everyday family life, ’small talk’ with family based in Serbia, creation of deeper bonds with other Serbs, the ability to follow the plot of the movies, literature, as well as media in Serbian and finally, the ability to engage in scientific discourse. All this is impossible without being familiar with the culture, as well as aforementioned contexts in which language can be used, and vice versa. I often mention a student of mine, a boy who is 15 years old and two metres tall who says: ’Boli me tiba’ (My tummy hurts) – he is familiar with the word ‘tiba’ (tummy) for stomach because he heard it from his mum. What he doesn’t know is that if he uttered that word in front of his friends in Serbia, he would not sound so cool. All this is related to culture, another thing that is learnt, as well as the language.
L: One of my favourite chapters of the book is the one that is named after the letter (& sound) ’I’– identity. Do children you teach identify themselves as Serbian?
J: This is a very interesting question and there is no single answer to it. In early puberty, Mika’s age, children start caring a lot about who they are. It is as if they feverishly start looking for the outlines of their own identity, and these need to appear ASAP. In these situations, national identity can be something that distinguishes them from their peers, in the same class for example, and many children will eagerly embrace this distinction as a safe one. Someone will put on the ’Nirvana’ T-shirt, while someone else will put on a sports jersey with the Serbian coat of arms, this is how it usually goes. However, this is not the only answer to the question. Another, very real and frequent scenario is for the children to hide their national identity in order to fit in, not to be different, and this is also something Mika is often afraid of. National identity attitudes can vary between these two extremes and will be heavily influenced by the way the parents see their identity, and further the relationship the children have with the values that are promoted within their family.
L: What can we as parents do to help our children who are growing up abroad learn and preserve the language of our ’home’ country?
J: Exposure, exposure and again exposure to the language. This is the key. The child needs to bathe in the language, literally. The language parent(s) speak is only one face of that language and it is an invaluable resource. However, as we have seen in the example of two-meter-tall student with aching tummy, that sole language source is not comprehensive. The African saying about the whole village raising a child can be transferred on the language acquisition – all close and far members of the family, from little cousins to grandmas and grandpas, peers, teachers, books, films, music. These are all the resources that a parent raising children abroad needs to put, sometimes artificially, into the language greenhouse, so that the language competences of their child blossom.
Lena’s note: Jelena runs a youtube channel with poems and stories for different age groups, as well as short advice on how to write essays and homework.
L: When it comes to language acquisition, what is the difference(or similarity) between the role of the parent and the teacher of the ’home’ language abroad?
J: The answer to this question is naturally linked to the previous one. Parents raising children abroad, as well as teachers of the ’home’ language abroad, often have the feeling of strong responsibility related to the ’home’ language. This is because they are one of the rare resources, sometimes even the only source their children or students acquire the language from. This can be scary and burdening, but also beautiful. Beautiful because we are in control of this valuable process, we manage it, so we are able to choose and filter things we think are best for our children. The role of the ’home’ language teacher abroad is much closer to the parenting role (or a close family member role) in comparison to the one in the regular school back home. This teacher first emotionally connects with the child and only once the emotional connection is established motivates the child to acquire the language. This is also the role with two faces: one, terrifyingly responsible and the other, wonderful, full of meaning and the feeling of purpose.
L: What is your children’s Serbian like these days? Also, as a mum, how do you feel about their dominant language shifting from Serbian to German?
J: My children were at a school age when we moved to Switzerland, so their Serbian was already well established. Now, I find it interesting to watch how German input, and input from other languages, since Switzerland is a multi-language country, influences their speech. Overall, I am satisfied with the process since I think multilingualism enriches them. However, as every mum raising children abroad, I get frightened from the impression that it is their Serbian that is currently suffering. Therefore, I tend to remind myself often of the postulate that in this phase… it is the language functionality that is necessary, not language perfection.
L: I wanted to ask if there is a plan to print ’Mika’ in the Serbian Latin alphabet (latinica) so that people from the region (who are not literate in Cyrillic alphabet) can read it. Now I know that you have a more modern solution for this. Could you tell us about it?
J:‘Mika’ is the fifth book that belongs to the edition Azbučni red (Alphabetical order). Goran Petrović came up with the idea for it. The basic idea of the edition is for the book to follow alphabetical order. This is how the novel ‘Mika’ has 30 chapters, each named after one letter of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet. Therefore, publishing it in the Cyrillic alphabet was the only option. However, the book talks about growing up abroad and in fact addresses the children who are in the similar life situation as Mika, ie they are not familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet. Therefore, we tried to find the way to enable the contact of this target audience with the book. Olga Buchholz helped us in this mission. In Switzerland, Olga founded a publishing house Audiomanija that publishes audio and ebooks in our language for the children who are growing up abroad. These children are used to audiobooks and eagerly listen to them in other languages, and now they have the opportunity to hear the book that is written (and read) for them.
L: Where can we purchase the book in Serbia and abroad?
J: It is relatively easy to find ‘Mika’ in Serbia – as far as I know, it is stocked in all Službeniglasnik bookshops, as well as all other well-equipped bookshops. In Serbia, it is also possible to purchase it online.
We are still trying to find a solution for ‘Mika’ to be purchased abroad, and I hope we will find one soon. Audio Mika is easily available on a number of different platforms for audio books, depending on the country and the continent. Details are available on Audiomanija‘s website.
L: ‘Mika’ already won some literary awards? Could you tell us about them as well as about the theatre show?
J: ‘Mika’ won three significant literary awards: the ‘Rade Obrenović’ award from the International literary centre for children ‘Zmajeve dečije igre’ (Zmaj Children Games); the ‘Maleni cvet’ (Tiny flower) award from the city of Niš, and the regional ‘Dragan Radulović’ award from the city of Podgorica. For me, this sequence of events is still surreal. It perhaps shows that Vladislava Vojnović, the editor, was right when she envisaged that the topic of growing up abroad is in a way terra incognitain our literature for children. She was also right in thinking that this topic will attract the audience’s attention.
Upon the receipt of the Zmaj children games award, I met Slavica Vučetić, a lovely young actress who runs Mali studio (the Little studio), part of the Youth theatre in the city of Novi Sad. She was intrigued by ‘Mika’, so she decided to create a show based on the novel with her students. I had a huge pleasure of attending the final rehearsal just before the public performance for the end of the school year. This is when I saw how the children actors revived the characters from the novel and this is still one of the main unforgettable experiences with ‘Mika’ I ever had.
L: Do you consider Switzerland to be a permanent home?
J: Before I decided to move countries, it was necessary for me to do some serious questioning and to redefine the term ‘home’. Therefore, in order for me to be able to start creating a home elsewhere, I had to persuade myself that for us at least, there is no such thing as a ‘permanent home’. To be very honest, if Pančevo isn’t the home, then nothing is. That is why I transformed the term ‘a permanent home’ into ‘a temporary home’ – in this period of life, a place that is suitable for us in many ways and that gives us a good start for what is coming in the next phase of life. Therefore, this is the place where we feel good, simply good, without much heavy thinking in big time and philosophical dimensions. What I want to say is that I could currently name another three to four places on the planet that I would gladly call ‘home’ and I think this is good. What makes Switzerland stand out currently are the people we met and the circle of friends we created in the last five years. Switzerland is also the place where I breathe free enough to be able to write a novel, on how you create a home far away from home.
__________
* The interview translation from Serbian into English was proudly done by me 🙂
**reference to a folk poem where Damjan’s horse Zelenko screamed continuously for a year after his master was killed.