Black ButterFly

Product Information

I feel Priscilla Morris is showing the reader that art, and in this instance the creative art form of painting, the painter’s view of the world in all its vibrant colors cannot be extinguished by the hatred and terror of war.

We’re all refugees now, Zora writes to Franjo. We spend our days waiting for water, for bread, for humanitarian handouts: beggars in our own city.” War couldn’t happen here in Sarajevo. Not here where everyone loved each other, she’d told herself with the simplicity of a child.”The author’s note clarifies which two persons' experiences she combined and adapted into this story. That lends a lot of validity to what would otherwise have seemed as fictional events improbable in real life. This was a wonderful though heart-breaking book which kept me reading all through, and one which I highly recommend. This is all pleasant enough but it doesn’t stir the blood. Ironically I rarely felt any visceral sense of the fear that would have been prevalent as the city ran out of supplies. There’s a new category here now: the good Serb, i.e. the Serb who is not a nationalist, who does not want to divide the country, to ethnically cleanse. I’m constantly having to reassure people that I’m a good Serb. It’s driving me insane.”

Everything is better when done together. The taste of food and water, the touch when they hug each other hello. They’ve made it through one more day, each reunion a confirmation that they’re still alive.” Zora is a landscape artist, obsessed with painting bridges. Following a period of ill health for her mother, Zora urges her husband and her mother to go to England to visit Zora's daughter and granddaughter. Gradually it becomes clear that what they envisage will be a temporary separation becomes something altogether more permanent as Zora is trapped in Sarajevo, a city surrounded. Neighbours and friends of differing nationalities (the author prefers this term to ethnicities) come together to survive through the toughest of times in this tale of humanity, art, community and what it takes to survive. The book provides a helpful tool for public affairs educators seeking to incorporate discussions of race into the classroom and steps to connect public administration theories of performance, budgeting, and management into a hands-on analysis of cities. It details a process to learn both about spatial inequity and to implement the next steps toward the remediation of historical trauma. The Bosnian war of 1992–1995 was something I knew little about, and this book helped me get some context. While the book doesn’t go into the motivations and differences that led to the conflict (indeed, the characters themselves are at a loss to point a finger at why), it goes give one an insight into the kind of multicultural space Sarajevo was. I had no idea that it was part of the Ottoman empire once, and enjoyed getting glimpses of its culture like how festivals were celebrated and some folklore as well as some of its bridges and landmarks. Sarajevo’s people continue to fight against the seeds of division that the conflict tries to sow (there are some of course, who hold radical views, too). A particularly beautiful, yet highly distressing moment is where people get together to save what they can from the library which is on fire: This is the third book in my quest to read all of the shortlisted books for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction.

Ruha Benjamin, Princeton University, author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code There are many situations in the book that will show you a side of war you have hardly ever seen in fiction. Some scenes create a claustrophobic feeling; others are way too disquieting. The story hits hard on your emotions. The writing enhances the impact. Sample this line written by Zora in a letter: “We're all refugees now. We spend our days waiting for water, for bread, for humanitarian handouts: beggars in our own city.” I went to Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro on holidays in May 2006, accidentally stumbling on an independence referendum in the latter, when it seceded from Serbia. Gunshots and fireworks broke out in the capital Podgerica in jubilant scenes that I will never forget. Putting Baltimore under a microscope, Brown looks closely at the causes of segregation, many of which exist in current legislation and regulatory policy despite the common belief that overtly racist policies are a thing of the past. Drawing on social science research, policy analysis, and archival materials, Brown reveals the long history of racial segregation's impact on health, from toxic pollution to police brutality. Beginning with an analysis of the current political moment, Brown delves into how Baltimore's history influenced actions in sister cities like St. Louis and Cleveland, as well as its adoption of increasingly oppressive techniques from cities like Chicago. The author has researched her book well and it shows in the detailed and precise penning of incidents and feelings.

Half of Sarajevo is Muslim, a quarter Serb, and fewer than one in ten Croat. A third of marriages are mixed, the children simply calling themselves ‘Yugoslav’.” Set in 1992, Zora Kočović is an art professor who lives in Sarajevo with her husband, Franjo (a former journalist), and her 83 years old mother. Sarajevo is a multicultural city (where the city is full of the Muslim, Serb, Croat, and Yugoslav populations) but racial sentiments, and ethnic tensions have arisen, and conflict is brewing. At this point in time, Zora decided to stay in Sarajevo for her painting and her job while Franjo and her mother traveled to England to visit their daughter Dubravka. Unfortunately, subsequent to the recognition of Bosnia as an independent and sovereign nation, the Bosnian War broke out and Sarajevo was under siege. Zora is trapped in Sarajevo and she is forced to maneuver around the constant bombings, shellings, and violence happening in the city, together with her neighbors and friends, and she has to resort to art to keep herself sane. Priscilla Morris took me inside the siege of Sarajevo through the eyes of Zora Kocovic, a Bosnian Serb painter, who finds herself trapped in the Bosnian capital and survives to escape during the bitter winter of 1992. Art is also an important thread of the book. This is what Zora does and also really the way she expresses her love for the city and also her emotions towards it. Initially we see her painting its bridges and landscapes—and later the destruction and fires that take over the city. Art also ends up offering her solace, when she feels lost, for her neighbours sending their little daughter Una for lessons gives her (in fact them both) something to look forward to. As the situation worsens, Zora wants to reunite with husband and she tries to finds way to escape. As this is a historically accurate book, it’s interesting to see how people escaped Sarajevo and made their way into safer countries.I wasn’t much familiar with the details of these events except for a skeletal knowledge of the war having taken place. So I found myself a little lost at times in understanding the geography and the politics of the region. I also didn’t understand what issue the war began over. ( Then again, one of the characters says that even they fail to understand why the war started in the first place. So I guess there’s no easy answer to this question.) I would have appreciated a brief note at the end on the facts behind the cause of the war and the political climate at the time, just like the facts behind the ethnic groups were clarified in the author’s note. What makes this book a 5 for me is the offering of ideas for solutions. It does more than identify and describe challenges. Brown is creative. The siege of Sarajevo is told through the eyes of Serbian artist, Zora Kocovic,as she witnesses her city crumble from the shelling of snipers in the mountains surrounding Sarajevo. Her apartment building, art studio (which sits above the library), are obliterated by the incessant bombing. The most devastating results in the death of innocent children and adults murdered while attempting to lead their “normal” and ordinary lives. Told from Zora’s POV, the use of third-person helped remind me that this beautifully written, descriptive, heartbreaking, and reflective story wasn’t a memoir!

This book was an accessible introduction about how inequity works in one city. Because Dr. Brown is a professor of public health, I expected this to be a dense body of work that was hyperfocused on lead poisoning in the city of Baltimore. I’m surprised the book achieved this acclaim since I found it worthy, heartfelt and uncomplicated. That’s damning the book with faint praise. With clear and succinct writing, buttressed by rigorous research and copious examples, Dr. Brown casts an unflinching light on the problems Baltimore suffers as a hyper segregated city. Only when a critical mass of concerned citizens is made aware of the issues raised in this book, can change begin. The best-selling look at how American cities can promote racial equity, end redlining, and reverse the damaging health- and wealth-related effects of segregation.There is a strong underlying theme of bridges, which is so ironic in a war story. Zora’s specialty is painting bridges. Her latest artwork is set around one of the main bridges of the city. Some folk stories within the narrative are set around bridges. And yet, all the bridges between Sarajevo and the outside world have been destroyed by the war, as have the internal metaphorical bridges between the different ethnic groups. It was an eye-opener! There were so many situations I simply couldn't fathom - your family property being distributed among strangers because of a communist government's weird beliefs, being on the waiting list for more than a decade to get a flat allotted, the government declaring that anyone can move into empty house as the owners have “abandoned” them… and this is even before the actual war began! How we take our privileges under democracy for granted! Sigh. However, it was more of the 10,000-foot view of how various systems work together to create the current mess and what it would take to solve it. Have you ever heard of such a thing? A human chain to rescue books. A moment of coming together, of resistance. But what good did it do? They say almost two million documents burnt in there. First editions, rare manuscripts, land records, newspaper archives. Our heritage destroyed in a night. I couldn’t help connecting this story with the situation in Ukraine right now. Of course, the author hasn’t written this book to capitalise on the current war because I had received this book from Netgalley in January and it is meant to be published on the 30th anniversary of the ‘Siege of Sarajevo’. But there are so many similarities between the experience of Zora and what we read about Ukraine citizens in the newspaper. It makes me feel like no matter how much our technology progresses, we humans don’t progress in “humanity” – our thoughts are still all about power and control, whether over nature or over other people. We are truly a selfish species on the whole. 😟