Bosnian St. Louis: Between two worlds

People here know about Bosnians because the community is quite large, but what is less known is how they got here, says book author Patrick McCarthy. Dr. Aida Ibričević is a researcher and consultant in the field of migration and diaspora studies. She lives and works in Sarajevo and is an external associate with the Migration Center at the Peace Research Institute (PRIO) in Oslo, Norway. BiH diaspora discussions directly in your inbox at www.aidaibricevic.com From Patrick McCarthy, author of the book "After the Fall: Srebrenica Survivors in St. Louis" (2000), in co-authorship with Akif Coga, a new book about the Bosnian diaspora community in St. Louis is coming this fall. Louis.  In this conversation, Patrick McCarthy talks about the creation of the book "Bosnian St. Louis: Between Two Worlds," as well as its importance for documenting the life of Bosnia and Herzegovina. diaspora in the USA. Inspiration for writing the book. Patrick McCarthy: I remember one day I came to Akif Coga and told him that I had an idea about trying to somehow tell the story of the Bosnians and Herzegovinans in St. Louis. Akif is my younger colleague, a native of Zenica with many years of journalistic experience. I've known Akif for a long time, so I thought he might be interested in working together on this project. People here know about Bosnians, as the community is quite large, but what is less known is how they get here. Who has been here before? How was BH founded? community in St. Louis? In our book, we are in a sense telling a chronologically organized story starting with who were the first Bosnians who came to St. Louis. Why did they come? What happened when a huge number of people started coming because of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina? Then we talk about the tragedy that happened with Selma Dučanović. We paid attention to the former Yugoslavia before and after.

Akif Cogo conducts interviews for the book - Patrick McCarthy

We are talking about the attitude of Americans towards the Bosnia and Herzegovina. diaspora community in St. Louisa, which was growing every day. We talk about how the community organized itself, how various organizational issues were resolved, and how religious institutions were established. Today there are three Bosnian mosques in St. Louis, and we explain in the book how they came about. We describe the political engagement of Bosnians in the USA and their progress in American society. The book includes interviews with people like Enes Kanlić, an orthopedic surgeon who is in St. Louis and arrived in 1991. A large part of the data for our book came in cooperation with the Bosnia Memory Project at Fontbonne University. However, whenever there were privacy concerns, appropriate pseudonyms were used to protect survivors and allow them to tell their stories accurately and truthfully. THE ORIGIN OF THE BOSNIAN AND HERZEGOVIAN COMMUNITY IN ST. LOUIS Patrick McCarthy: We begin our book by telling stories about people like Stipe Prajz, Muharem Basić, Ibrišim Dedić, and Smaja Čehajić, who were already in St. Louis when the war in BiH started in 1992. They were people who already knew the English language and were willing to help the refugees who were coming. In February 1993, the first five families arrived, mostly from the area of Bosnian Krajina and people who survived the horrors of the camps in BiH. Even long before that, there was an International Institute, which for more than a hundred years had been helping refugees and immigrants moving to St. Louis. They were part of the refugee resettlement network and gave information to the US State Department, IOM (International Organization for Migration), and other refugee organizations, which coordinated most of the refugee resettlement from Europe.  The International Institute did its homework and discovered that there are people not only from the former Yugoslavia but actually people originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina who are already here in St. Louis. Although many of them were Muslims by origin, they were associated with the Catholic Church of St. Joseph, which gathered Croats in St. Louis. One of the people who helped the first people who arrived from the war in St. Louis was Stipe Prijz, originally from Kotor Varoš, who was in St. Louis in 1951 as a political dissident from Yugoslavia. Read the Rest of the Text HERE.