Gordana Kuić’s “Balkan Trilogy”: On the Intimacy of Sephardi Matrilineal Legacies

Abstract This article studies Gordana Kuić’s autofictional, postmemorial, and translingual Balkan trilogy as an example of contemporary Jewish Sephardi literary production in Bosnian/Serbian. Focusing on matrilineal legacies, Kuić approaches Sephardi identity not from a purely historiographical perspective, but by mobilizing an affective and intimate language. I borrow Ann Laura Stoler’s term “the intimate,” in order to access Kuić’s matrifocal writing—as constant “intimations” of Sephardi women’s subjectivities in the text. The Balkan trilogy performs Sephardi identity by engaging translingual tools, interspersing Bosnian/Serbian with Judeo-Spanish, and punctuating affective vocabularies. Reading Kuić’s work thus allows for a more nuanced understanding of Sephardi presence in the Western Balkans and a deeper appreciation of the internal diversity of contemporary Serbian literature.