The Autobiography of Mira Furlan: Stardom, Exile, and Aging

Abstract

Mira Furlan (1955-2021) was a superstar of Yugoslav cinema up to her imposed exile to the USA in 1991. In the wake of the Yugoslav wars, Furlan, like other pacifist-minded intellectuals, was persecuted as a traitor and indirectly forced to leave. This paper analyzes her posthumously published, autobiographical Love Me More than Anything in the World (2022) for narrative elements signaling the simultaneous change in the narrator and her two homelands, between 1991 and 2021, along the lines of liberation and narrow-mindedness, hope and disillusionment, dignity and rejection. Special attention is paid to topics of self-identification, and the intersection of (female) aging and stardom. In writing about exile, liminality, Othering, the complexity of linguistic belonging, Furlan’s topics mirror (and contrast with) both Marjorie Agosín’s persona and her creative and academic work. Framing her narrative in terms of familial history, Furlan’s book also evokes Agosín’s recurrent returns to ancestors in the attempt to situate (and, in doing so, narrate) the histories of ongoing trauma, and ongoing resilience.