The Suitcase

The whirlwind of Europe's longest war in half a century has produced this powerful collection of personal narratives-essays, letters, and poems-from refugees fleeing Bosnia and Croatia. Taking us behind the barrage of media coverage, these stories tell of perseverance, brutality, forced departure, exile, and courage. With startling immediacy and in moving detail, speakers tell of stuffing a few belongings-a handful of photographs, a rock from the garden, a change of clothes-into a suitcase and fleeing their homeland.

Contributors from all ethnic groups and every region of Bosnia and Croatia describe their sense of lost community, memories of those left behind, recollections of town squares that no longer exist, and homes now occupied by neighbors. The editors of The Suitcase, themselves representing the diverse peoples of the region, traveled to camps and temporary homes across the globe to collect these stories. An antidote to apathy, this work moves beyond and outside the vicissitudes of daily politics to portray the human tragedy at the center of present-day Bosnia and Croatia. Probing the intimate losses of countless individuals, it delivers a powerful indictment of injustice, militarism, prejudice, and warfare.

Julie Mertus was a Fulbright scholar, human rights activist, and Professor of Law in Bucharest, Romania. She is now Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at American University. Jasmina Tesanovic is a writer and publisher in Belgrade, Serbia. Habiba Metikos was a lawyer in Sarajevo; she now lives in Canada. Rada Boric is a Director of the Center for Women War Victims in Zagreb, Croatia. Cornel West is Professor of African American Studies at Harvard University and author of Race Matters (1993), among many other books.

"In this exciting book, Martin brilliantly sketches out a relationship between the frenetic pace of modern life and the way in which bipolar disorder is imagined and evoked. Martin describes the way the diagnosis comes to carry meaning for those who hold it and the cultural dimensions of the way in which the illness is understood and experienced."-- Tanya Luhrmann, author of Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks at American Psychiatry "Learned, imaginative, and insightful, Bipolar Expeditions explores experience, stigma, and performance using the varied tools of ethnography, history, and social theory. Martin's readers will return from that contested and new-found land called mania with a richer and more sophisticated understanding of a fundamental aspect of the human condition."-- Charles Rosenberg, Harvard University "This is a gracefully written, lively, and wholly fascinating book. Martin offers a rich and multifaceted portrait of the role of bipolar illness--and of our notions about bipolar illness--in contemporary American society. The book is broad-ranging, both in its focus and in the theoretical perspectives it employs. I do not know of any other books that address bipolar illness in anything like this fashion."-- Louis A. Sass, author of Madness and Modernism " Bipolar Expeditions is a wonderful book. It is compellingly written, elegantly structured, both deeply scholarly and intensely personal. Destined to become an instant classic, the book offers a strikingly original argument with the potential to change forever how the reader thinks about 'mental illness.' Martin is a master of popular culture. She is also in command of a vast psychiatric literature."-- Lorna A. Rhodes, University of Washington

The whirlwind of Europe's longest war in half a century has produced this powerful collection of personal narratives--essays, letters, and poems--from refugees fleeing Bosnia and Croatia. Taking us behind the barrage of media coverage, these stories tell of perseverance, brutality, forced departure, exile, and courage. With startling immediacy and in moving detail, speakers tell of stuffing a few belongings--a handful of photographs, a rock from the garden, a change of clothes--into a suitcase and fleeing their homeland. Contributors from all ethnic groups and every region of Bosnia and Croatia describe their sense of lost community, memories of those left behind, recollections of town squares that no longer exist, and homes now occupied by neighbors. The editors ofThe Suitcase, themselves representing the diverse peoples of the region, traveled to camps and temporary homes across the globe to collect these stories. An antidote to apathy, this work moves beyond and outside the vicissitudes of daily politics to portray the human tragedy at the center of present-day Bosnia and Croatia. Probing the intimate losses of countless individuals, it delivers a powerful indictment of injustice, militarism, prejudice, and warfare.

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