the former yugoslavia – The Oaxacaborn Blog

When I was a girl, the grocery stores started to run out of food.

They didn’t tell you that, because it was a corner of the world you’re not supposed to understand, and they don’t tell you how to become a writer, either. Everyone is supposed to become a reader — they tell you that in school — but it remains a mystery how some readers are able to metamorphose into writers.

After all, the writer concerns himself with not just the reason why civilizations fall, but also the American supermarket, the meaning in dappled bananas on the counter at sunrise, the effervescence of this present moment, and using words incorrectly.

No one teaches you how to be writer, except maybe poets and historians.

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Poetry & Words, Theology

I Came to America After the Tanks Rolled in: Remembering the Former Yugoslavia

April 6, 2017June 23, 2022 Gina @ Oaxacaborn

I came to America after the tanks rolled in, just barely before they took Sarajevo. After the helicopter shadows moved across of the fields of buttercups and horseradish and daisies and wisteria, but before the mortars fell. I came to this country when the shelves started to empty of bread, of meat, of corn flakes. I came to this country after the money had already begun to crash, after sunken stacks of rubbery, hollow-eyed gas masks stared back at me at the check-out, but before pensioners had to stand in line to trade bag after bag of devalued coins for stale bread. I came here when the skies had already begun to darken, when the fear had started to slink down the quiet gravel streets.

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I'm Gina Munsey, a Jesus-lover and a sojourner; a weaver of words, anchored in hope. I am Mexico-born, Eastern Europe-raised missionary kid who ended up being a Californian by way of Florida outside of Nashville, Tennessee -- but we landed here before The Great Migration. I live my days full of coffee and adventures while my 12-year-old learns Mandarin Chinese and Greek, my 3-year-old uses all the markers, and my artist-husband creates worlds from pixels and light. I'm an editor, a magazine contributor, and a writer who has only completed four chapters of my languishing manuscript. On any given day, you can find me in the middle of [home]school surrounded by stacks and stacks of books. Oh, and the name of this blog? Oaxaca -- wuh-HA-kuh -- is in Southern Mexico, where I was born! (See full bio).