MANY WAYS TO TELL A WAR STORY

War influences generations, in large part, through how people talk about it. Having considered the cultural–historical process of script making across a political system, we now explore how individual young people transform national scripts into personal stories. Stories are variations on shared scripts, still social but specific in experience and choice, as expressed in the youth drawing in Figure 6.1. Although not asked to talk or write about war, some participants chose to do so, albeit in very different ways that provide a segue for discussing how young people define themselves in the inescapable shadow of political violence.

Consistent with the “tensions abound” script, 22-year-old Diana narrates a conflict in her hometown of Sarajevo in BiH. In this brief story, Diana foregrounds the war and its consequences as influencing “all Sarajevo.” As narrator, Diana embodies the tension, “it is very sad to see …” and implies her view that the monument should be “for all children from all Sarajevo.” Although not explicitly about herself, Diana's story presents a self-image. She expresses the local emotional context with comments about sadness, tensions, and feelings of being used.