What Brings Us Together?

Communism, difference, and an unexpected family history.

In all my travels across the countries that used to make up the former Yugoslavia, I have availed myself of a peculiar piety: I refuse to start conversations in Serbo-Croatian with anyone who does not consider it their native tongue. It always felt like a rude imposition to automatically fall back on it. Slovenian, Macedonian, and Albanian are distinct …