The book brings together a selection of articles published in Matica magazine and inspired by migrant and exile issues under the Global Croatia column over the past five years, penned monthly by Kukavica, the long-standing editor of the Croatian Emigrant Almanac and the head of the CHF publishing department.
Vesna Kukavica’s latest book, Umreženi identiteti (Networked Identities), was promoted at the Matis Club in Zagreb March 19th. This three hundred page collection of publicist works by editor, publicist and journalist Kukavica brings together a selection of articles published in Matica magazine and inspired by migrant and exile issues under the Global Croatia column over the past five years, penned monthly by Kukavica, the long-standing editor of the Croatian Emigrant Almanac and the head of the CHF publishing department.
The presentation was moderated by Lada Kanajet Šimić, head of the CHF education department, with a welcome greeting by Member of Parliament Ivo Jelušić, vice president of the parliamentary committee on Croatians abroad and president of the CHF board of directors.
On hand to discuss the book were CHF director Marin Knezović MSc and the book’s reviewers – historian Željko Holjevac DSc, communication science specialist Božo Skoko DSc and the book’s editor Ivan Čizmić DSc. They agreed that the book was an exceptionally valuable effort in bringing together articles covering emigrant issues that deserves the attention of the academic and reading public, and that, doubtless, has anthological value. Author Vesna Kukavica thanked the presenters and her collaborators on the book and presented some of the interesting details through a PowerPoint presentation created by Snježana Đuričković.
Speaking of the book’s publisher, the Croatian Heritage Foundation, Kukavica noted that everything done here – from the schools, workshops, the Internet language courses to publishing – was done as a team and in a positive atmosphere. 21st century emigrants are mobile, multilingual and successful people that are well adapted to the societies of their domicile countries. They are successful as writers, hoteliers, winemakers and scientists … and prove that Croatians in the new times, wherever they be, care for one another.
The book includes selected feuilletons, reviews and some sixty essays on the global and well-networked Croatia, and a series of fascinating stories of the fates of many of the “ordinary people” that have braved the unknown and headed out to distant America, Australia, New Zealand or nearby Germany, Switzerland and other countries.
Vesna Kukavica’s latest book, her second published by the CHF, successfully broadens the frame and tears down the stereotypes by which the Croatian Diaspora, its stakeholders and heirs, have been viewed, treated and described in Croatia. With a new century, it is time for a new perception – innovative and creative. Kukavica’s well-networked Croatia is formed by the descendants of earlier Croatian emigrants and our contemporary, established emigrants – reinvigorating venerable emigrant communities and building new links between themselves, the old homeland and the world around them.
Text by: Diana Šimurina-Šoufek; Photos by: Snježana Radoš