An oral history of homosexuality in Croatia

Celan Program Translations

Documenting accounts of the private and public activities of sexual and gender minorities before the rise of the LGBT movement in Croatia. This book is a pioneering attempt at documenting the life circumstances of members of sexual minorities in times before what could be called “the contemporary battle for the recognition and equality of human rights regardless of one’s sexual orientation” (that is, before the emergence of gay pride). In the socialist and recent wartime and post-war years, the conditions were such that the chosen research method of “oral history” might sound oxymoronic, considering that mostly, on all sides, homosexuality was something that was preferably not spoken about. This project presents a period of a parallel history that has never been researched. The results of this are evident precisely today, because non-heterosexuality is constantly experienced as something strange and recently imported from the West, as if it is not about the long-delayed, slow awakening of a stunted and abandoned identity.
 

Roles
Dean Vuletic (Translator)