Nadja Halilbegovich’s My Childhood Under Fire: A Sarajevo Diary

Abstract

This chapter draws on a close reading of Nadja Halilbegovich’s My Childhood Under Fire: A Sarajevo Diary (2006) in order to argue that its original entries and subsequent annotations demonstrate Marah Gubar’s kinship model of childhood studies, which privileges the relatedness, rather than the difference, between children and adults. It addresses first the content of Halilbegovich’s diary, which is concerned with charting the creative collaboration of children and adults under siege, and second, its form, which promises a rich negotiation between the author’s earlier childhood voice and the annotations she offers as an adult reader of her original diary.