One of my favorite childhood pastimes in Albania was listening to my mother talk about her adventures in a family of nine children – all hailing from Kosovo, but taking refuge in then communist Albania to flee from discriminatory Yugoslavian policies.
Being the youngest of the siblings, my mother would often echo the stories of her much older sisters and brothers, including how their father, a beloved teacher, persevered against all odds to gain his sons’ entry into the top schools of the region. But as I grew, I began to notice a pattern: there were no girl characters in these stories.
One day, I asked my mom about her five sisters, and that’s when the story transformed from an epic of perseverance to one of passive acceptance. Out of my five aunts, only one of them was allowed to pursue a middle school education in Kosovo, after years of begging and pleading with the family patriarch. The rest either never received the gift of education or were young enough to benefit from Albania’s more inclusive educational system and cultural atmosphere. These childhood stories seemed to offer a similar lesson: if growing up in Kosovo, hope very hard that you are not born a girl.
