JORDAN STEVEN SHER
AND STILL WE RISE is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can order from your favorite indie bookstore like Books Inc or just ask your local bookstore
BOOKS INC in Palo Alto
Excellent book reviews including one from local NPR affiliate in West Lafayette, IN. Go to REVIEWS AND MEDIA page on my website
MORE PRAISE FOR MY BOOK
"...it deserves to be remembered as one of the best truth-based fiction works about the concentration camps in Prijedor ever written."
Satko Mujagic, survivor of Omarska and Manjaca Concentration Camps; Human Rights Activist
"...harnesses the unique power of literary expression to convey the truth about the human suffering that resulted from the genocidal aggression against Bosnian Muslims. Research-based and historically accurate. Sher’s epic narrative will leave the reader deeply affected.”
David Pettigrew, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy and Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Southern Connecticut State University; Member, Steering Committee, Yale University Genocide Studies Program
COMINGS AND GOINGS
I never thought that my journey would take me in this direction. I started out writing a book that chronicled stories of immigrants to the U.S. where I met two women from Utica, NY, who were children during the war. Their stories inspired me to dig much deeper into the genocidal campaign by nationalist Serbs, and to understand that it continues today, not with a physical human toll, but an emotional one. My next book, my novel, covers the genocide in Prijedor, and follows one family's loss, survival, and resilience, to their eventual resettlement in the U.S. My third book, recently submitted for peer review, includes witness accounts from people who survived the war, and young adults who reflect on what it's meant to grow up in households with parents who survived.
All this has allowed me to advocate through numerous presentations in a variety of venues (see the "eclectic images" page within). Whether at universities like San Jose State, Purdue, or Western Kentucky, or the Illinois Holocaust Museum, or the Utica Historical Society, and those in-between, I have met new allies, and shared what I've learned and what I perceive will make for a better future for BiH.
Please know that my goal is always to give voice to truth, and to support my friends, allies, and the communities that want the same for BiH.
I am available to present to groups both in-person and virtually. Please email me to discuss your request at jordanstevensher1@gmail.com
Inspired by a strong sense of justice, giving voice to truth, and countering the narrative of denial in Serbia and Repulika Srpska, my writing has focused on the war and genocidal campaign against Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) in the early 1990s, and the reverberations that continue to this day.
Synopsis of And Still We Rise
This truth-based fiction begins in spring,1992 in Prijedor, Bosnia, with the Kovacevic’s, a Muslim family, confronted with the harsh reality that they are the targets of a brutal campaign to rid the country of non-Serbs. Neighbors turn on neighbors as the nationalist Serb propaganda leads to the so-called “ethnic cleansing” of communities that destroys families and their homes.
Elvir, and his fifteen-year-old son Amir, are sent to the Omarska concentration camp where torture and death haunt them daily. With a world that turns a blind eye, both suffer physically, psychologically, and spiritually. Yet they must rely upon each other if they are to survive. Hajra, Elvir’s wife, along with their two younger children, Halima and Danis, are imprisoned in another camp called Trnopolje. They, too, must survive the atrocities that visit them including rape and witnessing beatings and murder. Hajra and the children encounter Elvir’s brother, Tarik, who has been transferred to Trnopolje from another camp, only to see him disappear a short time later. As they all have learned too well in the camps, many disappear never to return.
The Kovacevic’s eventually leave the camps and reconnect with Tarik’s wife, Merjem, who is unable to accept the possibility of the loss of her husband. The families’ trajectories lead them to journey together as they face unforeseen obstacles that must be overcome if they are to find true freedom from the trauma that continues to inform their decisions. As refugees, they move to Germany and then to America seeking to rediscover meaning in their lives after surviving genocide, grieving their losses, and to place roots in their new home.