Zlata's Diary
by Zlata Filipovic
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Book Summary Information
Author: Zlata FilipovicContributor: Dorotea Puzio
Edition: Audio Cassette
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Audiobook
Published: 1994-03-01
ISBN: 0453008992
Number of pages: 1
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Book Reviews of Zlata's Diary
Book Review: Social and Economic Perspective taken from Zlata's Diary (Full Review)
Summary: 3 Stars
Zlata's diary is a an autobiographical representation of a young teenage girl, called Zlata Filipovi, and the daily living conditions that she experienced preceding and during military conflict in Eastern Europe - Sarajevo. In the course of her writing, Zlata described the conversion of her community from a moderate and relatively normal environment into an environment of chaos and devastation. Throughout her diary, Zlata navigated from one experience to another and along the way friends, family, foreign aid workers, and the local news helped to provide the backdrop for what life meant for those directly affected by the military conflict in Eastern Europe. Zlata's diary provided for an autobiographical translation of understanding what affects a person's life when the surrounding environment suddenly becomes unstable from conflict and the ruin of a social fabric.
Written in the perspective of a child, Zlata's diary provided for a human understanding of the tangible differences that occur when important social structures of a community become broken. Here, the negative consequences that resulted from such collapse provided for the graphic portrait of the fragility of an otherwise stable economy and the real affect on individual behavior. Taken in context, Sarajevo does not stand alone as an island apart from the economic reality of a surrounding environment within Eastern Europe. Instead, as witnessed with the experience of Zlata Filipovi, the economic reality of Sarajevo and the occurrences that transpired during its crisis, one is provided with an example for the future examination of potentially destabilizing events and a better comprehension of how such events influence the opportunities for real persons who are directly affected. Lastly, personal reflections on the above mentioned issues are necessary to develop a personal connection with the meaning of economic development, prudent implementation, and the use of intervention for future events that take place around the world.
Preceding the siege of Sarajevo in the spring of 1992, Sarajevo was part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and a previous host to the Winter Olympic Games in 1984. Yet, with the collapse of the `iron curtain' in Western Europe, an increase in democratic influence gave rise to increasing political instability within a non-democratic Eastern European region. As the most identifiable symbols of communism began to crumble with the Berlin wall in 1989 and the Soviet Union 1991, Eastern European countries struggled to manage a cohesive national identity and political framework. Thereafter, social pressures erupted into military conflict carrying significant consequences for the diverse ethnic populations of the region all of whom wanted greater control. Ultimately, repercussions from the conflict redrew the political boundaries dissolving the Republic of Yugoslavia into several separate nations beginning in the late 1990's until 2006. (Wikipedia)
A striking example of the direct affect instability has on a person's life was identified in Zlata's diary by a young teenage girl who recorded her daily experience(s) preceding and during a drawn out military conflict in Eastern Europe-Sarajevo. Before conflict arose, Zlata described herself as a normal teenage girl from a "comfortably well-off" family who regularly attended school to receive a liberal arts education. By any reasonable measure, Zlata compared to a majority of American teenage girls in her cultural and social experiences. Like many children her age Zlata reminisced upon past experiential enjoyments and eagerly awaited her upcoming challenges; writing, "Behind me - a long, hot summer and the happy days of summer holidays...[and]...ahead of me - new school year", (1). Moreover, Zlata's candid writing about her affinity towards the family vacation home in the countryside and the relationships that she had with friends and family invite the reader of her diary to share in her experiences in the first-person. By reflecting on the experiences first hand, Zlata's diary passages also served to provoke a consideration of the effect of instability on a personal level as well.
Even with such similarities of a common childhood experience, the most stark determination from the effect of war on Zlata was that the military conflict not only invaded her community but had also invaded her life; later, Zlata characterized herself as having a "wartime childhood" and writing that "war is now my life" (64). The military conflict in Sarajevo began in 1992, the effects of which occupied every page in Zlata's diary. From a peaceful, organized, and hope filled beginning, through the proactive response of her family to rearrange life and survive, to a drawn out existence in desperate disarray. First, as Zlata was introduced to military conflict in a neighboring area - Dubrovnik - her innocence is exhibited with a sense of juvenile remoteness. As Zlata's father is activated for intermittent, non-combat reserve duty, the preliminary fractures in social services were evident by long lines and hours spent waiting for gasoline (10). As pressure spread across the region, Zlata disclosed more self-awareness of her surrounding environment and focused on reporting life's daily proceedings that were removed from the evolving political events and daily crisis.
As conflict neared and began to engulf her community, Zlata reported more on the closing of school(s) and the loss in her life that was caused by the chaos in her community, rather than focus on the path her life would lead. From an initial erection of barricades in her town of Sarajevo, to the witnessed patrol(s) of armed civilians, Zlata's perceived innocence and universal childhood experiences are quickly transformed into a foreign abstraction. In place, scenes of mass migration and refugees escaping from sniper fire and artillery shells paint a different portrayal masking previous impressions of a community that once harbored a teenage girl who, like a majority of American children enjoyed extracurricular activities and summer engagements-Zlata Filipovi studied fashion, played piano, attended school, and could vacation with her family in the countryside. In consequence to the effects of war the society, Zlata focused more on the loss of electricity, the lack of phones, a loss of water, and the experienced familial struggle(s). In this manner, Zlata's diary demonstrated the all too real impact of attacks on the economic and social constitution that served as an underpinning to her psychological wellbeing and human development.
Tragically, the transformation of one's perception of Zlata is not just a turn, by the reader, from one abstraction to another, but rather, a recognition that the familiarity of life as Zlata had known was destroyed by the conflict of her community. Zlata's frame of reference for so much in her life was absolutely demolished from conflict; with a post office "devoured by flames" ...and... "shop windows, cars, apartments, the fronts and roofs of buildings" all destroyed from the fighting (40,41). The most explicit evidence of Zlata's tragic experience was her only salvation to take shelter in a cellar. Still, here, with each emergence, a landmark or previous reference of experience would cease to exist and a demolition of previous childhood memories were reported. Regardless of one's own outlook, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that the military conflict not only invaded her community but had also invaded her life.
With the human account of Zlata Filipovi, the understanding that social structures contribute a significant influence towards an individual's life can become better defined through the experiences reported in Zlata's daily passages. Accordingly, an impression can be determined to the extent that social structures provide for the underpinning of economic development and that these social structures are fundamental for human progress. This conclusion was most evident in the review of a deterioration of an already existent social system within Zlata's community. With basic infrastructure in roads, buildings, and schools, Eastern Euriope's erosion in social cohesion resulted in a downward spiral in the quality of life which came to the doorsteps of Zalata Filipovi in Sarajevo. Accordingly, an economic perspective can identify itself with traditional social development and the pre-conditions for take-off, as described in a classical model of economic development presented by Walt W. Rostow, (Todaro, 104). While it may not necessarily be the case that all countries must follow a linear path of development - as described by Rostow, Zlata's diary provided evidence that certain social structures certainly seem necessary for the `take-off' and sustainability of economic development.
Herewith, the most surprising element in Zlata's diary was the fragile nature of the social structures that underpin a national economy. The alternative perspective of a teenage girl who resided in a moderately developed country - as opposed to a well-developed economy or developing economy - gave the impression that social structures are dependent on the security, safety, and ability for social interaction. Notwithstanding the immediate flight of persons out of her community resulting in an inadequacy of resources, Zlata reported that those who stayed behind had come to band together and function as a community, saying, "the neighborhood is our life now, everything happens within that circle..." (71).
Despite a report of a black-market that functioned to substitute the city's bombed central market, such a report can hardly suffice as evidence that a free-market response is working towards providing a long-term solution, and if left to its own devices, will provide for the appropriate allocation of scarce resources. On the contrary, reports that a black-market operated is evidence of a market not able to respond to, and trade with customers, that, as reported, lacked and sought basic life sustaining needs, including water, electricity, gasoline, wood, phone, etc. In such conditions with an availability of labor the inability to allocate, produce, and deliver goods and services prove the failure of the market. Instead, the fundamental confidence from psychological factors that compose the social structures of a community, enable one to seek opportunities for growth, or trade, outside their own community, and, therein, must serve to underpin the progress of economic development and normal-proper function of a free market. Moreover, if social structures do in fact provide the impetus for long-term sustainable economic development, then, the uses of traditional measurements of economic productivity, such as GDP, fail to account for such elements. Instead focus should, also, be directed towards the establishment and measurement of durable and dynamic social structures in a community.
In the case of Eastern Europe and Zlata, a response to address the erosion in social capital could be addressed by a promotion of religious and cultural tolerance, greater governmental transparency, more equitable representation of diverse ethnic populations, and the promotion of basic human-civil rights (see UN declaration) for all persons without discrimination to gender, race, education, health, or age. Here recent experiments in economic development have provided for a micro-response to support women's rights to attend schools, participate in sports, contribute towards the productivity of the labor force. For example, micro-finance lending/access to credit has empowered women and small businesses to actively initiate the empowerment of women to realize and create opportunity. Hence, the establishment of durable and dynamic social structures will not only require an improvement in the quality of life and standards of living of a community, but also require improvements in the volunteer nature of social contracts, including: adherence to legal obligations, respect for social norms, and a willingness to serve the needs of others for the betterment of the larger community, meanwhile, supporting individual pursuits.
From the personal reflection of one child's life in war torn Sarajevo, the importance of social structures to a community are without question. The essential confidence in social structures, as examined with Zlata's diary, provided for one to experience a firsthand account of the effects of erosion in social structures that underpin an already functioning economic system. Given the personal narrative and familiar childhood experiences that one shared with the diary of Zlata Filipovi, the fragility of an economic system that constituted a community was all too real for the personal reflection of the diary's reported events and an understanding of the tangible differences that occurred from the collapse of social structures. Still, only through Zlata's experience can one be provided with an example for the future examination of destabilizing events and better comprehend how such events influence the life for real persons who are directly affected.
Summary of Zlata's Diary
A young Bosnian girl provides a firsthand, eyewitness account of growing up in Sarajevo, as youngsters confront the realities, hardships, devastating tragedies, and transcendent moments of ordinary life in a region torn apart by war. Book available.General Books
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