Mother Tongue: A Saga of Three Generations of Balkan Women

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Description

What is your mother tongue? Occasionally the most simple questions take a book to respond to. Such is the case with Tania Romanov’s story.


Mother Tongue is an exploration of lives lived in the chaos of part of the world referred to as the Balkans. It follows the lives of three generations of women―Katarina, Zora, and Tania―over the last 100 years. It follows countries that dissolved, formed, and reformed. Lands that were conquered and subjugated by Fascists and Nazis and nationalists. Lives lived in exile, in refugee camps, in new worlds.


What language did you speak with your mother? What language did you speak with your father? What language did you speak with your brother? For Tania Romanov there are three different answers to those questions.


Did you speak your mother tongue with anyone apart from your mother? That is the most unusual question of all. But for Tania Romanov, the answer is no. She spoke a unique language with her mother, one in which she is still fluent. And by the way, it was once not her mother’s native language.


The language is Serbian. Tania’s mother was once Croatian. Her father was once Russian. Tania was once born in Serbia, but left when she was once six months old. She and her brother grew up in San Francisco speaking English. She didn’t speak any language until she was once two.


Tania doesn’t know why she spoke Serbian, somewhat than Croatian, with her mother Zora. It never occurred to her to ask until she started writing her memoir. And by then, her mother was once gone.


The country of birth listed on Tania’s American passport changed four times in four successive renewals. Until the first time, she believed your country of birth was once a fixed point. Today she knows better.


Go with her as she journeys through time and history searching for answers, and finding some.

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