Amy Weston
Dr. Knutson
Inquiry Written Communication
12 October 2021
Home is Where the Heart is, Right?
How do you define home? Do you consider the town you were born in home, or is it the town you live in currently? Is home a feeling? A group of friends? Home can have many different definitions, especially regarding the topic of immigration. Many immigrants consider home to be either their country of origin or their new country. Immigrants may change their definition of home depending on the circumstances they’re in. One immigrant I know well is my aunt, Jelena. In conversations, her usage of the word ‘home’ changes constantly. This observation made me wonder what she considered home to be, but I quickly realized that the idea of home was a much more complex topic than I’d imagined. When I think of home, I think of the only place I’ve ever lived, which is my childhood home in Buffalo, Minnesota. For someone who’s moved, that definition doesn’t work. Many immigrants, my aunt Jelena in particular, may consider multiple places to be their home, and their definition of home can change frequently depending on their experiences in both countries.
For Jelena Cooper, home is Bloomington, Minnesota. As I interviewed her over Zoom, her feeling of being home was evident as we discussed my recent move to college and made plans for Halloween. She was sitting in the living room where I’ve sat so many times before, and she seemed completely comfortable. Watching her relaxed body language made me think of the first time I ever met her. She was perched on the corner of the couch, and every muscle in her body was tense while she explained how to pronounce her name: “It sounds like ‘YELL-en-uh.’ Don’t listen to what your grandfather told you; he doesn’t even spell it right.” Even through her nervousness, she was able to make jokes, which was evidence of her extremely sarcastic personality. Through the years, I’ve watched her become more and more comfortable in her physical home, but she also uses the word ‘home’ when referring to a completely different place. Even though she now calls Bloomington home, she also refers to another place as home, a country over five thousand miles away from Minnesota: Serbia.
Serbia is a country in Central and Southeast Europe, near Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Serbia was a part of Communist Yugoslavia until the early 1990’s when the Yugoslav Wars began. While war sounds terrifying, Jelena, who was a teenager at the time, didn’t really experience the effects of the war. She didn’t experience fighting near her home, as she lived in the Western part of Serbia and the war was fought in countries to the East. Jelena recalled that “Mostly war was in Bosnia and Croatia. Serbia didn’t really have a lot of conflict on our territory…I didn’t really feel that [the war] because I was a teenager and I didn’t really have a lot of relatives directly going there to war. It didn’t really affect me except for the sanctions… those were hard times for my parents.” These sanctions, placed on Serbia by the United Nations, caused hyperinflation, which led to the extreme increase in price of goods and placed a major economic strain on the country. This is the only way that Jelena was affected by the wars until 1999, when Kosovo tried to gain its independence from Serbia.
Jelena was 23 when the war between Serbia and Kosovo began. Kosovo wanted their independence from Serbia, but the Serbian government wanted to protect their territory, so war began. The North American Treaty Organization (NATO), particularly United States President Bill Clinton, agreed to help Kosovo in their fight for independence and began to bomb Serbia. These bombings lasted for over three months, with the capital city of Belgrade being the main target of the bombings. Belgrade is over an hour away from the town Jelena lived in, so she wasn’t in immediate danger from the bombs. Though there was little immediate danger, the bombings took an emotional toll. She seemed hesitant to talk about how she felt during the bombings in Belgrade, and I didn’t want to make Jelena uncomfortable by asking more questions. After the months of bombings, Kosovo eventually gained its independence from Serbia. Many Serbs developed ill feelings toward the United States because of their involvement in the war against Kosovo and their repeated bombings of Belgrade.
Because of the ill feelings toward the United States that many Serbs have, I wondered why Jelena decided to move to America in April of 2016. When I asked why she came to America, Jelena told me, “I met a guy online. It went from just talking to him visiting me in Serbia and me and Dragana [Jelena’s daughter] were going to move here and we were going to get married. It ended up being just me coming because Dragana wanted to stay in Serbia and finish her high school. So, that’s how I got here.” Jelena’s story proves that love really can conquer borders.
The first month in America was a huge adjustment for Jelena. She didn’t feel comfortable driving anywhere, as the roads in America are wider and the intersections are laid out differently, so she was afraid to drive to the grocery store, where there were even more cultural differences. Jelena recounted with a smile on her face, “There were so many different types of french fries that I just stood there for like half an hour just trying to decide what to buy, and then I didn’t even buy anything! It was just so overwhelming.” She continued to say that there weren’t nearly that many options regarding food in Serbia. If she wanted to buy french fries, there were only one or two options, rather than the aisles of different varieties of products that we have in America.
Jelena also said that the way people acted in stores here was significantly different here than in Serbia:
I thought people were weird in stores. I remember it was like, ‘Oh, hi! How is your day?’ and I was like ‘What?’ Why would she ask me how was my day? Cashiers in Serbia were so, you know, desperate, they’re working long hours and they end up with a monthly paycheck that was so low that they needed to figure out how to go through the month. Here they’re asking me how my day was when they don’t even know me.
I found that I could sympathize with this. I used to be a cashier and I always felt awkward making small talk with customers, so I’m glad that I’m not the only one who finds this odd.
After overcoming these major adjustments, America began to feel more like home. Jelena lived in Edina, and she particularly connected with the nature that surrounded her, even in an urban environment. Nature helped Jelena to feel more at home in America, and this is evident in her home now. There are plants scattered throughout her house, particularly the living room, and she and her husband and daughter spend lots of time landscaping their backyard and make frequent trips to their local gardening store to buy more plants.
Jelena enjoys life in America, but this wasn’t always the case. Around a year after moving to America, her now ex-husband began to abuse drugs and alcohol, creating a difficult situation for Jelena. Even though she needed to divorce her husband, her immigration status depended on her staying married for at least three years. However, she was able to hire a lawyer and was able to get her conditions lifted, as she was unaware that her husband had a substance abuse issue before moving to America. After divorcing her husband and getting the conditions on her green card lifted, Jelena was free to begin a new life in America. She got a job working for the State of Minnesota in the Lottery department and met my uncle, Charlie, who she later married. Shortly after the wedding, Charlie and Jelena applied to get Jelena’s teenage daughter, Dragana, a visa to live in the United States. This was successful and Jelena traveled back to Serbia in 2019 to help Dragana move. Once Dragana arrived in the United States, Jelena felt like she was truly home. One of the major reasons Jelena feels at home here in America is because of her marriage to my uncle, Charlie. With Charlie, as well as his entire family, Jelena is free to be herself. She doesn’t have to change any part of her personality to fit in with our family; she is able to be herself without fear of judgement. The ability to be yourself is crucial to feel at home in a new country.
When asked what she missed about Serbia, the first thing Jelena said was bread. This statement flew out of her mouth before she was even able to think about it, and we shared a laugh about this while she had a look of shock on her face. Even though this answer seems extremely odd and she said it somewhat jokingly, she frequently talks about food from Serbia that she misses or is reminded of. Food is an extremely important aspect of culture, so I’m not as shocked at this answer as she was.
On second thought of this question, she said that she misses the more social aspect of Serbian culture. During our interview, Jelena told me about one aspect of Serbian culture that she misses:
I think Serbian people are more social. Like getting together, you know, talking, whatever. I guess I miss the social part. I think Americans are cold, closed. That social part is not really something you’re good at… That social part where people would be communicating and having each other for small talk or something, here you just go to work and have things occasionally but in Serbia we would do it like every night.
This social aspect is something that I see occurring in my family frequently. Jelena often has my grandfather over for dinner multiple times a week, and we get together for fun as frequently as once a week. This aspect of Serbian culture is something that I am extremely thankful for because it has helped me to grow closer to my family.
I also understand how Jelena thinks that Americans are cold and closed. As Minnesotans’, we often refer to our way of speaking as ‘Minnesota nice’, but a more accurate term for this would be ‘Minnesota passive aggressive’. As many people new to the area might experience, Minnesotans aren’t always the most welcoming people, even though they seem nice to your face. Minnesotans can seem like they would like to become friends, yet an invitation over for dinner is seemingly impossible to obtain. From what I have heard from Jelena, many of the social connections made here are not nearly as deep as the connections made in Serbia. It can be hard for people new to the area to make new friends, regardless of the social climate, but when people native to the area are passive-aggressive, becoming friends and making meaningful connections can become extremely difficult. The absence of friends or acquaintances can make adjusting to a new culture even more difficult than it already is. Having friends is an important part of making a new area feel more like home.
Even though there are aspects of Serbian culture that Jelena misses, such as the more welcoming social climate, she said that she probably wouldn’t go back. Jelena told me that “I don’t really miss anything. I don’t really. I never cared about my country because it never gave me anything good. Nothing. I mean, nothing was good. If I wouldn’t have friends and family there, my parents, not even family, I don’t think I would ever go there.” When referring to Serbia in conversation, Jelena often says “back home” or “at home”, even though she stated that she would most likely not go back. This suggests that home can be multiple places at once. Jelena refers to Serbia as home, yet she also considers America to be home. Even during this interview, when Jelena would refer to Americans she would say ‘they’ rather than ‘us’, which shows that even though she considers home to be Bloomington, there is some aspect of her that believes that home is Serbia as well.
We’ve all heard the quote “Home is where the heart is.” In Jelena’s case, this is true. Her daughter is here, she has a husband who loves her, and she has family and friends here. Even though she once felt at home in Serbia, she now feels at home here in America. She feels at home here, yet she also knows that deep down, Serbia is home as well. Her heart is split between two different places: where her family is in Bloomington, and in Serbia, where she was born. Even though home is often considered to be a physical place, for Jelena Cooper, home is wherever she feels like it.
Works Cited
Cooper, Jelena. Zoom Interview. 16 September 2021.