This was a fun departure from some of my darker and more serious reads. The protagonist grew up in Belgrade and remembers it fondly for many reasons, but the geopolitical realities of the breakup of Yugoslavia cause her immediate family to emigrate to Australia. Her father does well in a career there, but the family struggles through the very common issues of immigrants thousands of miles from their home countries, and frequently goes back and forth. The story ends with Sofija in her late teens, having gotten a better handle on her identity and competing in a diasporic beauty pageant of other young women that had similar experiences. A delightful coming-of-age story that didn't sugarcoat how hard she and her family had to struggle. ( )

I came across this interesting memoir via Non-Fiction November, when I read the review at What’s Non Fiction.
Sofija Stefanovic is based in New York, but like me, she’s an Australian with roots elsewhere. She was born in what was Yugoslavia and is now Serbia, and migrated to Australia to escape the growing instability in the 1980s. Her father loved it here, but her mother missed home, so (having prudently acquired Australian citizenship first) they went back, only to find that things were worse than before. And so they returned, to join the community of Yugoslavs in Melbourne, whose numbers were by then swollen by refugees fleeing the violence.
To deflect any sense that this is another misery memoir of discrimination and not belonging, Stefanovic begins with a droll chapter about a beauty pageant that she has organised. The competitors are all from the now separate countries that used to be Yugoslavia:

The idea of a beauty pageant freaks me out, and ex-Yugoslavia as a country itself is an oxymoron — but the combination of the two makes the deliciously weird Miss Ex-Yugoslavia competition the ideal subject for my documentary film-making class. (p. ix)

She is herself a competitor, but she is struggling with the ‘look’.

It’s 2005, I’m twenty-two, and I’ve been living in Australia for most of my life. I’m at Joy, an empty Melbourne nightclub that smells of stale smoke and is located above a fruit and vegetable market. I open the door to the dressing room, and when my eyes adjust to the fluorescent lights I see that young women are rubbing olive oil on each other’s thighs. Apparently, this is a trick used in ‘real’ competitions, one we’ve hijacked for our amateur version. For weeks I’ve been preparing myself to stand almost naked in front of everyone I know, and the day of the big reveal has come around quickly. As I scan the shiny bodies for my friend Nina, I’m dismayed to see that all the other girls have dead-straight hair, while mine, thanks to an overzealous hairdresser with a curling wand, looks like a wig made of sausages.
‘Dodi, lutko,’ Nina says as she emerges from the crowd of girls. Come here, doll. ‘Maybe we can straighten it.’ She brings her hand up to my hair cautiously, as if petting a startled lamb. Nina is a Bosnian refugee in a miniskirt. As a contestant she is technically my competitor, but we’ve become close in the rehearsals leading up to the pageant.
Under Nina’s tentative pets, the hair doesn’t give. It’s been sprayed to stay like this, possibly forever. (p. viii)

This jaunty style is maintained throughout the book, transitioning into a more serious tone only when the author explains the political chaos that was the catalyst for her family’s migrations, or when there is personal tragedy. The story covers her childhood, teenage years and early adult years, adjusting to the differences between a crumbling soviet society and a liberal democracy.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/12/07/miss-ex-yugoslavia-by-sofija-stefanovic/ ( )

Well written memoir of life as a young Serbian immigrant to Australia. The book gives a rich rendition of the theme of the child migrant growing up in a new country while maintaining links, memories and loyalties to the old country. The book also gives an insight into the hearts and minds of Serbs who were appalled by Milosevic and his actions, but remained Serbian stalwarts all the same. ( )