Oral History Series: A Stranger's Supper: An Oral History of Centenarian Women in Montenegro

Centenarian women in Montenegro, eh? It may seem a little eclectic, but in fact the recollections of 10 aged women reveal a fair amount about the misty, distant past and the very real present. These women are the living remains of an archaic culture, as Milich says in her introduction (``entering the third millennium A.D., much of tribal Montenegro lingers on as a living reflection of prefeudal Europe''). Although the interviews were conducted in 1990, before fighting in neighboring Bosnia had begun, these seven orthodox Serbians, two Muslims and one Catholic reveal a sometimes surprising mix of hostility and tolerance (the German army comes off well; the ``Turks,'' i.e., Slavic Muslims, don't). All the women, though, are bound by their common hardship: in the patriarchal society they describe, a woman's sole worth is her ability to produce sons; otherwise, she works hard and has no voice. Milich tends to offer her subjects the same few questions, some eliciting dully similar answers--e.g., it becomes obvious early on that nobody kissed before marriage. Other questions (What do you think about your position in society? How about the women warriors tantalizingly mentioned in the introduction? Did any women rebel?) go unasked. Milich, herself of Montenegrin descent, doesn't stint in describing the women's hardship, but she also seems to buy into the idea that this system was an evil necessary to the country's survival (``the embodiment of the Montenegrin male, spawned by a system reliant on strong, brave warriors for its preservation''). Which may be true in part, but it is also undeniable that this bellicosity led to internecine blood feuds that took their own toll on the country. (Dec.)