The book "The Invisible Woman and Other Stories" Slavenka Drakulić speaks openly, emotionally and impressively about today's biggest taboo - aging. The inevitable process that affects each of us is not easily forgiven, and in a society that recognizes only eternal youth, old people become invisible and redundant. Problematizing topics such as the relationship between parents and children, forgetfulness, the loss of a partner or illness, this collection of stories talks about aging authentically and without embellishment. Sixteen superb stories by Slavenka Drakulić, both poignant and humorous, make readers wonder how they relate to themselves and their loved ones. The book "Invisible Woman and Other Stories" by Slavenka Drakulić was recently published by "Laguna".
Slavenka Drakulić, journalist and writer, was born in Rijeka in 1949. She publishes books in Croatian and English, some of which have been translated into more than twenty languages. She has six titles published by the American publishing house Penguin. In non-fiction books, he mainly deals with everyday life in socialism, and after 1989, with war. Her first nonfiction book "The Deadly Sins of Feminism" (1984) is one of the first articles on feminism in the former Yugoslavia. Followed by: "How we survived", "Cafe Europa", "They wouldn't even step on an ant", "The body of her body" and "Fables about communism".
In her literary works, Slavenka Drakulić focuses on the female body, illness and trauma, also questioning the lives of creative women who lived with famous artists. She published the novels "Holograms of Fear", "Marble Skin", "As if I'm Not There", "Divine Hunger", "Frida or About Pain", "The Accused", "Dora and the Minotaur" and "Mileva Einstein, Theory of Sadness". He lives between Croatia and Sweden. He publishes articles, columns and political commentary in newspapers and magazines The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Internazionale, Dagens Nyheter, The Guardian and Eurozine.
Does it take mature years to write the book "The Invisible Woman and Other Stories"? What specifically in your case was the trigger for writing these stories?
- If I want to be consistent with my belief that imagination is more important for writing than experience, I have to answer this question that age is not the most important thing. And I really don't think they are, although experience - as in any other case - can come in handy. Namely, every person has an experience or an experience worth telling, only that they are not able to express it. In this sense, talent and imagination are more important than experience for a writer.
For me, more than my age, the stories I heard in doctor's offices, at the hairdresser's, from friends and acquaintances who are older... In one class, I started listening to them more carefully, that's all.
Youth seems to deny old age and aging. Why is there such a belief in the first place?
- Young people are not interested in old people at all, they do not show the slightest respect or desire to help - such as giving up a chair in a waiting room or on a bus. They don't learn it at school or at home anymore. And why should they when contemporary culture is aimed at young people and values such as speed and efficiency and above all - consumerism. Well, the elderly are only good if they are good consumers! For that matter, there are entire industries for the elderly that offer nutrition, vitamins, cosmetics to maintain appearance and youth, travel, various activities for the elderly, exercise, yoga... The message is that you can be old but you must not look that way. Just like being old is a shame.
Do men and women experience old age in the same way? And how do your heroines deal with that, let's say natural phenomenon?
- In this book, I deal with the female experience of old age, that is, I do not go into the male psychology of aging. However, research shows that men have a harder time coping with retirement and the loss of social status. No wonder, how can you be important and respected with a minimum pension? From a dominating position in the family and society - you become a burden on the family and society. It is difficult to experience this change without consequences.
Women age better than men. Thanks to the fact that they always have several functions in their lives, for example taking care of the household and children, then grandchildren, often also for older family members, retirement actually relieves them. They have more time for themselves, for cultural activities because culture rests on women. Maybe this is one of the reasons why women live longer than men?
We meet the characters of the book "Invisible Woman and Other Stories" in everyday situations, such as going to the doctor, walking, buying clothes, and in these situations their inferior social position comes to the fore. Nowadays, the old age you write about has become socially unacceptable. These seem to be off-limits topics?
- I wouldn't say, old age is written about, but more in the sense of lack of social care: small pensions, lack of homes owned by the municipality or county whose price is more affordable than private ones and the like. Little is written about the psychology of aging and old age, and the elderly often suffer from loneliness, especially if they do not have children, friends, or close relatives. In old age, at some point you become insecure, physically and psychologically insecure. Nobody wants to listen to you, you don't really have anyone to talk to, anyone to complain to, so it's no wonder you feel invisible and written off.
Aging is associated with fears, dementia, invisibility in society, powerlessness and surrender. Does age have its good sides?
- The theme of my book is actually the fragility of old age, physically and mentally. The worst aspect of that age is the narrowing of horizons in every sense, as well as the gradual loss of identity that is often associated with senile dementia and diseases that cause memory loss. Of course, there are good sides, you have more time, you can devote yourself to your family, grandchildren, and hobbies. But a lot depends on health and financial status above all. The healthy and wealthy can travel. Those in intellectual occupations can still read, write... artists also feel age differently than most people of that age.
Through the book "Invisible Woman and Other Stories", the attitude towards the mother and dealing with her aging, which is difficult for the descendants to accept, runs through the book. It seems that the mother's age, after her own, is the most difficult to bear?
- We no longer live in the countryside like we used to, three or four generations lived together in the same house.
By moving to the city and to small apartments, everything changed. There is no more room for old parents in a two-room apartment. Where to with them when they can no longer live alone? The question of care in the home arises, but in a patriarchal society it is not very common, people often feel guilty.
Especially if it is a seriously ill parent that you can no longer take care of. It may be more difficult for women to face this situation when it comes to the mother, because in life they relied on them, they helped them with the children and took care of the household, and now they need to be placed in an institution. It can be an emotionally very difficult situation. I always remember the dramatic descriptions annie ernaux, a French writer who writes in the book "Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit" about visits to a nursing home to her mother suffering from Alzheimer's. My mother decided on her own that she would live in a home near where she was born. She spent seven happy years there.
You say about yourself that you are happy that you were able to grow old. Does that mean you love your age and have approached it properly?
- All my life I have been fighting with a serious kidney disease, so I can say that I was lucky to see my age with a transplanted kidney - I will soon turn seventy-two. In my case, aging is like winning the lottery! Except that instead of money, I got something much more precious, time. Perhaps it was the serious illness that psychologically enabled me to approach this topic at all.
In your earlier books, you dealt with the female body, the experience of pain, pain in art. However, there was no age or relationship to age in these topics. Why was this topic often overlooked by writers?
- It is difficult to say why a topic is more or less present in literature. While researching, I noticed that more men write about aging, and that intrigued me. Women seem to hold back more, even in autobiographies. Maybe because of the general atmosphere of denial and fear of aging? Even feminist literature does not abound in descriptions or analyzes of that age. Women, I found, also write about old age indirectly, often through descriptions of illnesses experienced by the characters in the novel. As if it's easier to express emotions related to aging.
I am also interested in your latest novel "The Accused", in which you describe the taboo topic of emotional and physical abuse of children and what happens after that. And this novel testifies that a large part of human suffering originates from the family and from the neighbor... Am I right?
- Allow me to correct you, my last novel is "Mileva Einstein, Theory of Pain" from 2016. "The Accused" was a novel published earlier, in 2012. But you're right, in it I deal with the taboo of a mother abusing a child. In our culture, mothers are untouchable, little is written about abuse, and therefore it is hard to believe that such mothers exist at all. We rarely find out about domestic violence and how big a problem it is, usually only when the case reaches the media, for example when a man throws his four children off a balcony or a mother beats her three-year-old daughter to death, as happened recently in Croatia. Experts who deal with this phenomenon on a daily basis, such as psychologists and social workers, could say a lot more about it.
In your three novels "Frida or about pain", "Dora and the Minotaur" and "Mileva Einstein, the theory of sadness", the heroines are three exceptional women (Frida Kahlo, Dora Mar and Mileva Marić) who were in relationships with dominant men and because of them have suffered. What else do those novels have in common and how were they received by readers?
- All three novels deal with the relationship of a couple in which both are creative, but one person dominates. Why? Is it only because he is a man, or are other circumstances also decisive, such as society's attitude towards the emancipation of women, for example? These three women are very different. Frida Kahlo is apparently the weakest because she has been fighting the disease all her life. However, she is actually strong and persistent, a painter who does not give up painting, even when, all broken, she has to lie in bed for months. Dora maar is much more unsure of herself and, under the influence Picasso, stops doing photography. A Milevin the case is a combination of unfortunate circumstances that destroyed her career even though she was an extremely talented physicist and mathematician. My impression is that female readers received these novels very well wherever they were published and that, at least in part, they could identify with the characters in the novel.
We live in a time of pandemic. You were lucky enough to recover from the virus. What are your personal experiences?
- Corona is a serious disease and a year after I got over it, I still haven't fully recovered. It is incomprehensible to me that people willingly risk their lives and do not fear for their loved ones when they refuse to be vaccinated because they do not believe in science, but in some prejudices and conspiracy theories.
Covid has changed human communication. And how much has our world and ourselves changed under the pandemic? And how did it affect literature, writers and writing?
- Humans are incredibly adaptable beings and there are no circumstances that they will not learn. Of course, some things have already changed, such as the way of communication, working from home, not traveling and the like. I would not dare to predict, but it seems to me that for the most part we will return to the habits and customs from before this pandemic. And what's worse, I'm not sure we'll learn anything.
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