Black ButterFly

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Zora joins with her friends to survive the days, offer comfort to each other, and find reasons to hope. Zora must cope with much—the struggle for survival, the pain of watching the city she loves being torn to pieces around her, her art that she lives for and through which she expresses herself destroyed, separation from her family (whom she needs more than ever at these times), grappling with the question of leaving versus staying, and really also wondering about the war itself which makes no sense. The author mentions in her note that there are no ethnic identities but national identities in Bosnia, but unless you read her note entirely, you won’t understand why.

I liked that he warned us that there are a lot of people discussing racial equity that are not seeing the larger picture. I understand my limitations as a student and acknowledge that I might not be able to act upon many of his suggestions, but I think it is important to be aware of the politics and policies so that I can do my part, whatever that may be.

I held it all together until I came to a letter dated July 18, 1992, and the dam broke and I sobbed. He also does a good job of providing specific solutions to these problems, with cost estimates and policies that would actually help these communities in a structural way, rather than throwing some money at the problem and having it all go to development companies anyway.

The term "Black Butterflies" is used to describe the "burnt fragments of poetry and art catching in people's hair". And she treats it with subtlety and sensitivity—we feel pain, loss, helplessness, hopelessness—and without bringing in the slightest hint of drama. All I can say is, if you are looking for a book that unveils the hidden costs of war on the citizens forced into it, and that juxtaposes many opposite feelings - vulnerability and resilience, hope and hopelessness, devastation and creation, this is the book for you. The most devastating results in the death of innocent children and adults murdered while attempting to lead their “normal” and ordinary lives. While he should be applauded for offering solutions to the problems so well documented in the Black Butterfly, the solutions are wholly untethered from reality.

The author focusses on the experiences of those surviving in the part of Sarajevo that was under attack by the Serbs. I remember seeing his poems all over Instagram a few years back and loving each and every one that he posted. In The Black Butterfly-a reference to the fact that Baltimore's majority-Black population spreads out like a butterfly's wings on both sides of the coveted strip of real estate running down the center of the city-Lawrence T. If the past 16 years in politics have taught us anything, we have learned that different people have their own definition of America.

Then again, one of the characters says that even they fail to understand why the war started in the first place. Her apartment building, art studio (which sits above the library), are obliterated by the incessant bombing. 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. Taking into consideration multiple facets including a social impact bond program, reparations, peace building instead of or in conjunction with policing, desegregation, working alongside corporations and more, he creates a thoughtful budget and plan to right these wrongs. I fact-checked many of the notes and references and can assure the reader that the Black Butterfly stands on firm scholarly grounds.

This was a challenging read (and suffered from being a book I owned and therefor was not under a library due date to finish). Undoubtedly paints a vivid picture of a besieged Sarajevo in 1992, and deserves to be read for that reason. Set in 1992 Sarajevo, Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris is a harrowing (fictional) account of the first year of the Siege as seen from the perspective of fifty- five year old painter and Professor of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts , Zora Kočović, a civilian trapped in the war-torn city that has always been her home.