The Suitcase: Refugee Voices from Bosnia and Croatia
YA.  This collection of memoirs provides a stirring and disturbing picture of what reality is all about for those people fleeing the disaster of Bosnia and Croatia. Divided into five sections, the translated accounts of the real victims of the war add lasting images to those seen on television or captured in photographs. The suitcase contains some 75 stories of these people, mostly women and children, as they flee the war-zone conditions, long for home, settle into life as refugees or displaced persons, and attempt to make a new life away from all they had formerly known. A one-line description of the narrator (age, name, and location) precedes each selection, and a short afterword explains or extends the individual story. Because of the oppressive topic, this collection is difficult to read from cover to cover; however, it serves as excellent primary-source material for any research on conditions in the former Yugoslavia or on refugees throughout the world. The narratives are readable; a single black-and-white map at the front includes many of the towns, villages, and cities cited in the text. Photographs confirm the devastating state of life for these individuals.?Dottie Kraft, formerly at Fairfax County Public Schools, VACopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.