And exactly like that, playfully and lightly, and deeply and wisely, Jovkovska’s essays know how to seduce us with synesthetic descriptions of children’s laughter, morning rituals at five o’clock in the morning, whether in Ljubojno, Ohrid, or somewhere in the suffocating Skopje jungle, the layers of splendor in the novels of Mario Vargas Llosa, the paintings of Kandinsky or the poetry of Valéry, altogether with the roadside signs about the love for animals and the necessity of care for the nature. But as it happens in life, optimism and cheerfulness sometimes are not sufficient inspiration to isolate ourselves from the cruelty of the disasters that affect the human race, the latest traumas of our generation, the black statistics of the pandemics or domestic violence, topics that are seriously thought through and felt through by the author. As she said in an interview, “Diving inside yourself was inevitable during a pandemic. The stories from the women’s kitchen, as I like to call the literary fabric of “Emotional Sediment”, have been written for the last two years, while humanity has been struggling with diseases, crises, vaccines, fear, uncertainty, and stress. Writing this prose came to me as a therapy. Too closed in the four walls of my own home, this was my spiritual exit to the world that was struggling to survive and normalize itself.” (Dimkov, 2022).
In that sense, it is realistic to believe that the book will have a similar therapeutic and cathartic effect on the readers as well, or as the writer, Goce Smilevski will note in the foreword to the book, “This whole book stems from self-questioning before the challenges of the modern life, and is a series of quests for preserving one’s integrity, and discovering one’s strategies to fight against all that separates us from our essence. So, it is a work that is perceived as a call and as an incentive to all those who will read it, to embark on an identical adventure of self-examination and self-improvement through an analytical look at their emotional sediment.” (Smilevski, 2022:201-202)
In that way, Jovkovska’s fifth book spontaneously continues the series of authentic, non-standard, and non-molded forms that we fell in love with in her previous books, especially in “I love, so I exist” (Skopje: Tri, 2019) and “Echo of Freedom” ( Skopje: Tri, 2018). Those notes uprooted from everyday life are painted with only one and the same goal – to speak honestly and openly about the timeless themes of life, freedom, love, injustice, truth, altruism, ego, and integrity. Thus, in this book too, the readers will also discover the wounds of civilization, and the pains of each of us, those that we usually want to hide from others and push under the carpet, because it’s easier that way. But, it’s not so for Ana. In her diary precisely manner, she honestly shares her own experiences, fears, and tears, she complains about the transience of the moment or the burden put on mothers’ shoulders in raising children. She digs beneath the surface of conservative expectations and patriarchal models without a grain of calculation, exposes consumerism and women’s obsession with age and weight, and unmasks the steel boots of perfectionism, false morality, and eternally misunderstood emotional relationships. She proclaims courage as a liberating emotion and encourages us all fearlessly to confront what we don’t like. She motivates us to break the illusion that we have everything under control, to ask for help, and not to be afraid to be vulnerable. She pushes us to be socially responsible and vocal against injustices. She stimulates us to love unconditionally and to live our own way! And just like the cover illustration, she is a megaphone that gives voice not only to her own introspective worlds but also to the challenges of the world in the turbulent times we live in, with a stressed feminine sensibility and an intense emphasis on the struggle for gender equality, which probably can be sensed from the exposed breast that discreetly peeks out from the megaphone.
In that context, Stojmenska-Elzeser will say that “… this is an honest and intelligent reading, informed and lucid, dense and thoughtful, which primary aim is to reach the reader, to establish the much-desired communication with a wider circle of perceivers, to encourage a reaction, and thus further action in the direction of versatile feminist and humanist activism, which represents a significant component of the rich and complex personality of the author.” (Stojmenska-Elzeser, 2022: 88)
And most importantly, for Ana Jovkovska, all these messages to the readers are not just platitudes, they are taken from the deepest self, from the soul where she has put all the mothers with sick children, all the workers who did not get paid, all the victims of the pandemic, all marginalized, deprived and lonely, she brought us all together with all our sufferings and insecurities. In return, when she critically questions herself, “Is my literary mirror the true reflection of my character? Am I exposing myself to another layer of emotion with each piece of text? Am I bravely stepping on life’s stepping stone by writing, or am I comfortably hiding behind other author’s words? … Am I running in my comfortable, and only my emptiness, in my own nostalgic silence by my writing? Or I try in vain to understand all the human noise and to make a piece of screaming silence from it…” (Jovkovska, 2022:186), we can only say to her “You are screaming Ana, you are also screaming in our name!” And for that scream of “the new pink,” all of us, your readers, are infinitely grateful!
References:
Димков Тони, Разговор со Ана Јовковска за книгата „Емотивен талог“: Прозна вивисекција на срцето, умот и светот, Слободен печат, 04.05.2022, https://www.slobodenpecat.mk/razgovor-so-ana-jovkovska-za-knigata-emotiven-talog-prozna-vivisekcija-na-srceto-umot-i-svetot/
Пристапено на 19.07.2022
Јовковска Ана, Емотивен талог, Скопје: Три, 2022
Мартиновски Владимир, cover of Емотивен талог, Скопје: Три, 2022
Смилевски Гоце, „Емотивен разговор со себе и со своето време“, in Емотивен талог, Скопје: Три, 2022, pp. 201-203
Стојменска-Елзесер Соња, „Ана Јовковска, Емотивен талог, Три, 2022“ in Културен живот 1/2, Скопје, 2022, pp.87-88