On Wednesday, April 13, 2022, the book Ni s kućom ni bez kuće was presented in Osijek. The book was presented by Dražen Kušen, PhD, Hrvoje Mesić, PhD, Nives Tomašević, PhD and Ivana Hebrang Grgić, one of the authors.
It is a book that first systematically collects many pieces of scattered memory from a special group of Croatian emigrants, and then puts together a mosaic of recognizable figures of Croatian publishing in New Zealand from 1899 in print until 2020 in online environment… On the example of Croats in New Zealand and this valuable study of their publishing activities from the first immigrants to the present day, we can conclude that it is important in the Homeland and abroad to have the identity in heart, preserve identity in the community and affirm the value of identity in politics. None of these three components can survive without mutual synergy. When one of them falls, the identity falls.
Dražen Kušen, PhD
Already the motto at the beginning of the book, an excerpt from a letter from Josip Franic, a Croatian emigrant in New Zealand, in Pučki list in 1895, announces the dual principle of muddy poverty and sublimity of Croatian immigrants – attempts to fly to the stars and falling down into reality. The strength of the spirit is maintained by the solemn vibration of hard life and the permeation of longing for better days and times at the foot of the homeland. The nostalgia of the loss of the Croatian man strengthens the bloodstream for the successful overcoming of darkness and the arrival of bright days – the parallelism of religious hope.
Hrvoje Mesić, PhD
