Analysis Of Hemon In The Book Of My Lives

In The Book of My Lives, Hemon introduces multiple topics that in a way or another result in the change of point of view through relating to similar experiences that Hemon had. Displacement is a topic that he was challenged with, as his change of surroundings caused him to go through a phase where he became aware of failure of reconnecting to his identity.
Hemon is first challenged with displacement during the time that he is conscribed in the Yugoslav People’s Army and begins to hold a nostalgic feeling towards his family and the food they shared together. In the army, Hemon can’t help with feel displaced not only with himself but with the unity he shared with his family as now in his new surroundings “Food wasn’t meant to be shared, because it was a survival commodity” (Hemon, 34). Through this Hemon fantasizes of his mother’s cooking and to his plea of feeling unity and love that he is lacking while serving the army, his mother makes a trip to feed his child and is given the love and family unity that he missed and came to an awareness of the importance that family is to his identity. But later on, while living in Chicago, Hemon is exposed to a different type of displacement that leads him to search for his identity. Borscht was a soup that his family cooked …show more content…
The way I have been modeling my life as the way I lived in my home country. Tried to mimic and recreate everything that I remembered, from the food to the family parties, everything. But as Hemon acknowledge his failure at trying to recreated the feeling of unity, it made me become to my own realization that I too was trying to make my own “borscht” after all these years. As also, I was trying to hold on to what I thought was my own identity but I have failed as I don’t have the key ingredient to knowing who I am, what constructs my identity which is my