Nada Šabec, Slovene Immigrants and their Descendants in North America: Faces of Identity. Maribor: University of Maribor Press, 2021. Walter Grünzweig In the mid-1970s, I studied at Ohio University in Athens, located in the nonindustrial, economically underdeveloped Appalachian region not much affected by European migration to the state’s northern industrial centers some 70 years earlier. A short time after my return to my native Austria, a friend of mine from Ohio visited me, and we took an extended trip to Yugoslavia, a country in which Americans took great interest at the time due to its strategic position at the global ideological divide and its important, though aging, leader Josip Broz Tito. As we traveled on trains, sat in cafés and hung out on beaches, much of it in Slovenia, some people, hearing our American English, addressed us, wondering whether we were from Ohio. After a while, the association became disturbing to Mike, and he wondered whether I thought something about his physique or his dress or anything else made him look like an Ohioan and whether Ohioans were somehow different from the rest of Americans. I have told this story many times as part of my travel lore, but it is particularly instructive when reviewing Nada Šabec’s magisterial study of Slovenian immigration to Anglophone North America. First, the conflation of the state with the country demonstrates the significance of (Northern) Ohio as a center of Balkan Slavic (and not only Slovenian! ) migration, which also explains why Šabec’s study focuses on the City of Cleveland. Incidentally, the author lived in Cleveland for extended periods of time as a researcher and based her first, more linguistically inclined book on her research there. Although her new book takes a larger perspective, including Slovenian migration to Canada, especially Vancouver, it is really a book about Cleveland, Ohio, similar to the way that studies on Polish migration to the US are often about Chicago. Secondly, my friend’s experiences of being perceived as an Ohioan shows Slovenians’ (and, again, other former Yugoslav peoples’) knowledge of, as well as interest in, their migrant communities. It is thus important that this remarkable book is written and published in English. On the one hand, of course, this is because it can be read by the many Slovenian-Americans of the second and third generations (and beyond) it deals with and who would often be unable to read an academic text written in Slo- AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Band 49 · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2024-0007 Rezensionen 144 venian. On the other hand, Nada Šabec’s study is also significant as an interesting case study for scholars and individuals working in the field of migration. Slovenian migration is unique for two specific reasons: Firstly, the proportion of this migration is extraordinarily large compared to that of other nations. Secondly, similar to other nations that were part of the Habsburg Empire, Slovenians did not migrate from their own separate and independent country. My favorite fact about Slovenians in the world is that, just prior to World War I, the three largest Slovenian cities were, in that order, Trieste, Ljubljana and Cleveland! The methodology and the contents of this investigation address the special situation of Slovenian migration to North America. Nada Šabec is a linguist by training, but like many linguists who work on foreign languages, she has a cultural studies’ bent. In the current study, the questions she asks thus go beyond linguistic features and address cultural as well as soci(ologic)al frameworks. The book’s key concept actually is identity, and rather than limiting her potential findings to a narrow definition of this term, she actually retains its semantic magnetism, which helps her include aspects of the Slovenian diaspora in Cleveland that she would otherwise have overlooked or which would have fallen through her grid. As a researcher who investigates “cultural narratives” (i.e. stories that cultures tell about themselves), I am not worried about the eclectic lists of “factors” Šabec uses to measure and/ or explain Slovenian ethnic identity. One example is the following list of six: „Slovene language, culture, religion, cuisine, work ethic, and other.” (61) This definitely is, at first sight, a very diverse and unsystematic catalogue. Obviously, language operates in each one (as long as Slovenian is still the medium of communication). Would “cuisine” not be at the very heart of “culture? ” Only ultra-orthodox believers will separate “religion” from “culture,” and many examples in the study show that “religion” is central to “cuisine” (given the many religiously inspired holidays that obviously use food as an important medium). Finally, “work ethic,” in a way the odd-man-out on this list, is a particularly curious item reflecting, I suspect, a Slovenian autostereotype vis-à-vis other Balkan nations (similarly to Germans with regard to the rest of Europe). Far from being systematic, this list is closely related to the largest and, to me, most important and interesting part of the book, namely the “Immigrant Narratives.” Some 120 pages, as Šabec touchingly says in her preface, “give a voice to the participants in the study themselves who, through narratives, relate their own personal experiences and views […].” (12) I disagree with the opposition she makes between the “subjective tone and authenticity” of the narratives and the “comparatively more objective data from the empirical research in the first part” (12), but this is irrelevant here. What she gives to Cultural Studies is so rich and plentiful that we should gladly accept it. While I thus evaluate this book from a cultural studies perspective, I certainly do appreciate its linguistic findings. The focus on bilingualism is Šabec’s starting point for her study of the Slovenian immigrant experience, and it is certainly fascinating to observe how the monolinguality of the fresh migrant mutates to various phases of bilingualism, only to end, in most cases, in a new, Reviews 145 English-only, monolingualism. As a former learner of Slovenian, I was particularly interested in the one feature that makes Slovenian, along with Sorbian, unique among European languages, and that is the Dual. I was disappointed with the results in regard to that morphological feature. In the data Šabec collected in North America, she apparently did not find any examples of it, thus apparently radicalizing a tendency where “the use of the dual is in the process of weakening in the Slovene as currently spoken in Slovenia.” (45) This is interesting because, in other areas of the language, including lexicology, conservative attitudes seem to prevail. One Slovenian-American, not a linguist, returning to her home country, finds that she is “bothered not only by foreign words, but also by the slang, especially among young people, e.g. why ‘frendica’ and ‘lajkati’ [from ‘friend’ and ‘like’] when the language has the adequate words […].” (141) However, Slovenian migrants to America also produce neologisms, albeit inadvertently at times. My favorite word in the book is the way “some of the participants in my study” pronounce Pennsylvania as “Penslovenija.” Šabec reports: “When I drew their attention to this, the participants claimed that they were not aware of the mispronunciation, but when presented with tape-recorded proof, speculated this may have to do with their association/ similar pronunciation of Slovenija.” (45) What a modest way of interpreting what seems to me a Freudian way of projecting their original homeland into their new one! Is the new country a prefix of the old - Penslovenia ? Or is, as in “Pennslovania,” the European ancestral land introjected into the new one similar to the successful Slovenian tourist campaign centering on “Slovenia” (“Slovenia is the only country with love in its name”). Altogether, however, it is impossible “to ignore the omnipresent pressure of English as a dominant language and, as a consequence, the increasing attrition of Slovene across the generations.” (50) This makes for “a very transitional and unstable bilingualism” and turns “language maintenance” into a burdensome process. (51) Slovenian has some 2.5 million speakers globally and questions of language ecology are, consequently, more pressing for them than for speakers of other, more prevalent languages. It is, therefore, particularly noticeable that Šabec takes a very open approach to the attrition of the Slovenian language. She acknowledges that “integration” is a natural part of the migrant experience, preferable to either assimilation or separation/ marginalization (see 19f.), and she therefore sees the Slovenian population “becoming a valuable part of the mainstream society while also preserving a degree of cultural identity.” (20) The ultimate question, then, given the inevitability of language “loss,” is whether and to what degree a Slovenian identity can be maintained? This problem is best formulated by a member of the second generation, Milan Vinčec, a music teacher in the Slovenian school in Toronto. He explains the development of his Slovenian identity in the context of getting to know the songs of his ethnic community: “My young ears heard the beautiful Slovenian language, as I pondered the meaning of the lyrics. My heart pounded as I danced to the beautiful rhythms of this unique music.” (231) At the end of the interview, it Rezensionen 146 becomes apparent that, while the language will disappear, the music will remain: I believe we are in the midst of a significant paradigm shift here in Canada. That is to say, Slovenian identity will be associated more with emotional attachment, and nostalgic longing, in regards to certain values and cultural traditions. Language will no longer be a consideration, because the Slovenian language will no longer be spoken. […] The question is whether knowing and speaking the language is essential to one’s cultural identity. Can people consider themselves to be truly Slovenian without speaking the language? (233) His own answer is hesitatingly positive: “I imagine the Slovenian culture will survive, one way or another. It will be considerably different than the one I knew.” (233) But his question reaches further, to the very center of the “ethnic debates” in both Canada and the United States. The Slovenian answers given in this volume are manifold and complex, and they deserve to be heard. The stories told here are full of musical instruments and music (tamburitzas, accordion and polka), cooking and food (klobase, sauerkraut and Jota bean soup and potica) as well as religious traditions, none of which are truly exclusively Slovenian. In fact, more than once do we observe how “ethnics” band together to express themselves in what they consider to be “theirs.” But these stories are not informed by a nationalist essentialism. The practice of Slovenian ethnicity in North America is here often expressed in psychological terms or as a starting point of or incentive for creativity. Sometimes, folk costumes and cuisine can “re-charge [the] batteries” (169) or a Slovenian book can be “a balm for the soul.” (72) For one interviewee, becoming a specialist in Japanese language and culture is indirectly connected to her Slovenian heritage - i.e., ethnicity as a motor for international awareness and a global outlook. On many occasions, the storytellers explain how being Slovenian made them special. Obviously, “being ethnic” assumes a significant value in the age of the standardizing effects of mass media. Whether the Slovenian case may indeed be somewhat special, as I am inclined to believe, this book is definitely a contribution to the debate. And whether “Sloveneness” (53) or “Slovenia-ness” (149), the “Faces of Identity” presented in this attractive book, with a cover painting by Maribor artist and professor of painting Anka Krašna entitled “Across the Ocean,” in which the fish seem to swim in two directions, are as diverse as the questions they raise. Walter Grünzweig TU Dortmund University