Diaspora Voices 9: Identity

Diaspora Voices is an occasional series of conversations with ex-Yugoslavs living abroad.

With Dijana Savić-Jambert (Chicago / Paris).

Listen: “Diaspora Voices 9: Identity” (Episode #129)

Bonus Extras: “Diaspora Voices 9: Identity” (Episode #129)

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Transcript: “Diaspora Voices 9: Identity” (Episode #129)

PETER KORCHNAK: This episode of Remembering Yugoslavia is brought to you by Yugoblok, a member-supported global community and resource hub for all who remember Yugoslavia. Through membership contributions, Yugoblok members make this podcast (and a whole lot more) accessible and freely available to all. Members can also listen to episodes ad-free and have access to extended and bonus episodes.

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[JINGLE] 

PETER KORCHNAK: This is Remembering Yugoslavia, a Yugoblok show exploring the memory of a country that no longer exists. I’m your host, Peter Korchnak.

Diaspora Voices is a segment on this show featuring conversations with ex- or post-Yugoslavs living abroad. Today’s yugodiasporan emailed me a while back, three years ago now, to share her thoughts on the podcast: “I wanted to share my story with you and the impact that your podcast has had on me,” she wrote in a nearly one thousand-word message. We recently reconnected over a different project, related to my doctoral studies at the University of Ljubljana, and that conversation is, with permission, distilled into what you’re about to hear.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: Dijana Savić-Jambert was born in Wisconsin in 1989. Both her parents come from the same village in the Šumadija region of Serbia, then part of Yugoslavia. Her mother immigrated to the US as a child in the 1960s, then as a college student in Yugoslavia in the 1980s she met a boy back in her village and, long story short, the family of three moved to the United States just before Yugoslavia disintegrated. 

DIJANA SAVIĆ-JAMBERT: Being in my family unit of, you know, four, my parents, my sister and I, I’m the only one born in the U.S. The only one. As a kid, I was always so proud of being Serbian and what that meant. I mean, we were very, very involved in, you know, diaspora life in Chicago. I grew up 100 percent in all of that. So while I was completely, you know, conformed in terms of, you know, American society and my language, English, all of that, I had the weird first name, I had the weird last name. I ate cabbage at home. Like there are all of these different things that very much came up. You know, as a kid. 

My response was never to shy away from it. I embraced it. I loved the otherness. I loved those things that made me different. It was something that I was very proud of and really honestly, never shied away from any of that, contrary to maybe how some other kids, you know, might react. 

But I do think the big thing for me that, very quickly, I think maybe subconsciously, I was realizing is, like maybe my otherness in my own family, I always wanted to be born in Serbia too.

PETER KORCHNAK: Savić Jambert now lives in France (her husband is French and they run an interior design studio together. And, you guessed it, here too, she has a weird name, plus she now is an American and has a weird accent too.

DIJANA SAVIĆ-JAMBERT: In France, they go by your passport, like, where you’re born is what you are. Now I’m Dijana Savić, born in the U.S., but I’m Serbian in the U.S., that’s always how I’ve presented myself. I feel way more Serbian. That’s such an important piece of my personality, of my identity, but I know that even that, you know, in my context, when I’m in Serbia, you know, “ja sam naša” but “amerikanka”…

PETER KORCHNAK: “I am ours” but “an American woman.”

DIJANA SAVIĆ-JAMBERT: I’m dealing with these different facets of who I am and what my identity is. 

PETER KORCHNAK: It was in her 20s that Savić-Jambert began exploring her family heritage.

DIJANA SAVIĆ-JAMBERT: I think it came from what I mentioned, this, like, idea that I was the only one in my family born elsewhere, and I think I started to understand this, like feeling of [being] different within my family context. 

I grew up with with my maternal grandparents down the street. They split their time between the U.S. and and Serbia, but very much were part of raising me, and I was with them all the time. And, you know, having these stories about— Obviously, we went back to Serbia all the time, having my diaspora community, so it’s like you got the culture and all that. And it was probably for me as a teenager, going back to Serbia and starting to experience relationships with friends and family and going out and having, having more of than just like, Oh, it’s a family trip, like starting to have roots in my own way definitely, you know, sparked some curiosity. 

And then, specifically, I say 15 years ago, because that’s when I moved to France for the first time, and I started spending a lot more time in Serbia on my own. It was me going and spending two months there, me going and spending, you know, whatever, amount of time, a lot more frequent[ly] than when I was going from the US.

And I think it was this desire of being in a place where I had so much family around me, something that I didn’t grow up having in the U.S. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Visiting the place elicited a special emotion. A lot of us, even if we aren’t from there, feel it there.

DIJANA SAVIĆ-JAMBERT: And to be honest, the thing that, like, I will never be able to explain, is, like, the energy that I feel when I’m in Serbia. That like ancestral connection that they talk about. I feel it vibrating through me when I am in Serbia. It’s wild, because it’s, it’s emotional, it’s incredible, it’s intense, it’s exhausting, like it’s all these things, but it’s the only place in the world that I feel that.

And so I think it’s really this mix of wanting to understand my own origins, my own family story.

Because I grew up not in Serbia, I didn’t grow up with all of the deep cultural references. Those are things that now I’ve taken it upon myself to search and seek out. 

PETER KORCHNAK: A couple of professors at her alma mater, University of Wisconsin-Madison, at the Slavic Department, helped open additional worlds for Savic-Jambert along the way as well.

DIJANA SAVIĆ-JAMBERT: I felt like the more that I uncovered, the more I wanted to know, and the more that I felt like, I need to understand these things. This is, again, for me, this is all of my origins, this is where I’m from, this is part of my culture. I want to know and understand it and not feel otherness when I’m in Serbia, if that makes sense.

PETER KORCHNAK: It’s like having a foot in two worlds but perhaps not being firmly planted in either. Always a stranger in each land, somehow.

Then along comes the Remembering Yugoslavia podcast.

DIJANA SAVIĆ-JAMBERT: There was a few episodes that, literally, I remember being in the car and it was like uncontrollable tears and like joy and just a lot of emotion, because it felt like the people in your different episodes that you’ve highlighted just were able to capture the sentiment that— Again, I grew up in the diaspora. I grew up with other kids like me. I never felt like I’ve had this kind of connection or this that, these feelings that resonate with me, I’ve been able to share with others in my context of how I grew up as a Serbian elsewhere.

In a sense, it definitely creates, like, a sense of community. Some of these feelings that I don’t even discuss with my own family, I don’t know if it doesn’t seem relevant or it just doesn’t come up, but like some of these feelings, I felt like you’ve literally extracted and mirrored in different episodes. 

So all these different stories just have resonated with me. They made me feel definitely seen and heard. Things that I think I think I wasn’t even capable of articulating and putting into context where all of a sudden, I’m listening to people saying things that I’ve thought and, you know, and wondered myself. 

So it was a sense of, like community, the sense of, I guess, maybe loneliness that I felt, that I didn’t realize, that all of a sudden, I felt less lonely.

PETER KORCHNAK: That it’s in English helps of course.

DIJANA SAVIĆ-JAMBERT: I don’t know, it felt like this really unique platform of being able to connect these different ideas and thoughts that I had not, at least, been exposed to ever before. I just feel like a door opened…

PETER KORCHNAK: …to other sources and resources, people…

DIJANA SAVIĆ-JAMBERT: All of this has very much encouraged me to connect with more you ex-Yugoslavian kids like me in the world, and it’s crazy that when you start thinking things and putting things out there, how you start connecting with these people? Because my, like, adult network of Yugoslavians in the world has grown, like exponentially.

PETER KORCHNAK: But more than anything, Savić-Jambert continues on her original path.

DIJANA SAVIĆ-JAMBERT: It’s something that I come back to a lot: thinking about how we stay connected to culture, origins, especially as someone who grew up in the U.S., where that stuff in one generation can, like, fizzle out. You know what? I mean? It’s the melting pot all of that. And it’s something that for me, I think about regularly. How do I keep my connections to my culture alive and well, especially now [that] I live in France. So it’s like seeking out how I’m incorporating it in my daily life, from cooking food, listening to Serbian music, reading in Serbian, connecting with family in Serbia, talking to Serbian friends, like being intentional, being intentional. 

I will mention this because it’s important. I feel like France is also a country where they want to frenchify everything and everyone, and it’s like, you know, integrate and just be, you know, homogeneously French and all of that. And I, as I did in the US, like, I combat that every day. 

I just could have never imagined that, that this would be part of my life journey. like this, like question of identity, I mean, because this has become such a prominent and continual theme in my life, and I feel like even more so for me, now my French life, that is, it’s always, it’s always there.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s all for this Diaspora Voice episode of Remembering Yugoslavia, thank you for listening. 

All guests’ opinions expressed are solely their own; unless otherwise noted they do not express, reflect, or represent the views or opinions of any third party, including myself. 

Find additional information, sources, embeds, links, photos, and the transcript of this episode at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia.

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Outro music courtesy of Robert Petrić. Interludes courtesy of Sticky Keys.

I am Peter Korchňak. 

Ćao!

DIJANA SAVIĆ-JAMBERT: Just this identity journey, I expect to be on it for a large my whole life, maybe large portion of my life.