On the threshold of exile. The writings of women from the former Yugoslavia

The essay focuses on the experience of women authors emigrated from former Yugoslavia, and their writing from the exile... The concept of threshold (soglia) and of crossing thresholds as the essential characteristic of women's activism and communication is central to the essay. The author explores the concept of thresh-old across some literary texts and includes the autobiographical aspects of experienced migration from her native city Zagreb to Trieste, Italy, developing in a form of dialogue the "conversation" with a polish-American author Eva Hoffman who moved from Krakow, Poland to Canada and USA. In spite the differences of the two paths of integration in new social environments, many similitudes will be found between the life experiences of the two authors. Particularly will emerge the history of belonging to two different separated worlds, the appropriation of the new language, the reduction of plural identities, the role of memory and nostalgia in the integration process and the meaning of citizenship in a specific cultural and historical contexts.