Sweet Valley High, Kolo, and Growing Up the Children of Immigrants in America

By Milanka Šulejić

If you want to know what growing up Serbian-American in the 1980s and early 1990s was really like, I should probably start by admitting that I wasn’t spending my afternoons reading Serbian classics, discussing literature, or contemplating the preservation of my cultural heritage.

I was reading Sweet Valley High and listening to New Kids on the Block.

Yes. That was me.

I was an American kid. I went to American schools, read American books, listened to American music, watched American television, and had all the usual interests of a girl growing up in that era.

But there was another world, too. It was always there, woven into the ordinary business of growing up.

At home, my parents spoke Serbian. Their English came with heavy accents, and we children mostly spoke English. We would sometimes imitate them — their pronunciation, their expressions, their mannerisms — and laugh. Not because we didn’t love them. We absolutely did. We just found some of the things they said and the way they said them hilarious.

It was affectionate teasing. The kind of thing children do when they know their parents well enough to imitate them perfectly.

And then there was my vocabulary.

I could be speaking perfectly ordinary English and suddenly insert a Serbian word or expression as though it belonged there. Because, to me, it did.

And if there was one word I used constantly, it was bogami.

Now, bogami deserves an explanation.

We didn’t just say it because it sounded good. We said it when somebody was telling a story and we wanted to make absolutely sure the person telling it was telling the truth.

Someone would be explaining something, making a claim, or insisting that an event had happened exactly as described, and there it was: bogami.

It was almost like saying, “I’m serious. This is the truth. You’d better believe me.”

A little verbal confirmation. A stamp of authenticity. An informal truth certificate.

I probably said it every other sentence.

Bogami this. Bogami that.

And somehow, it worked perfectly well in the middle of an English conversation.

I didn’t think about being bilingual. I just spoke the way I spoke. One language belonged at home, another belonged at school, and sometimes they both showed up in the same sentence.

That was normal to me.

The Parents Were Building a Life. We Were Trying to Have One.

There is something about growing up the child of immigrant parents that is difficult to explain to someone who didn’t experience it.

You grow up in America, but your home carries another world inside it. Another language, another set of customs, another way of doing things. Your parents bring memories, habits, expressions, food, humor, and traditions from the places they left.

You inherit the whole package.

And, naturally, you spend part of your childhood wondering why your parents cannot simply behave like everybody else’s parents.

Of course, eventually you realize that everybody else’s parents probably embarrassed their children, too.

But ours had accents.

Our parents were building lives in America. They were working, raising families, making friends, and creating a community. We were growing up, going to school, making friends, listening to music, and trying to figure out where we belonged.

They were navigating a new country. We were navigating childhood.

Sometimes those two experiences fit together beautifully. Sometimes they collided. And sometimes we were the unofficial interpreters between two worlds, even when nobody had asked us to be.

We didn’t always understand what our parents were trying to preserve. We were too busy trying to have a good time.

Somebody Was Always Visiting Somebody

A big part of our social lives revolved around our parents’ friendships.

We visited their friends’ homes. The adults would sit together, drink coffee, talk, laugh, and enjoy one another’s company. It didn’t always have to be a birthday, holiday, or special occasion. Sometimes the occasion was simply that people wanted to see each other.

And that was enough.

The adults would settle into their conversations while we children were free to do our own thing. Our parents would tell us to go play and check in if we were hungry or needed something.

So we went.

We played, wandered around, found other kids, moved from room to room, and made ourselves comfortable. Sometimes we’d end up in the basement and dance kolo.

Because apparently, even when we were visiting somebody’s house, we could turn the basement into a dance floor.

There was no need for an organized children’s program. We were perfectly capable of entertaining ourselves.

And there was always somebody around.

The little kids were running everywhere. The older kids wandered around trying to find one another. Teenagers had their own social priorities, which often involved trying to hang out with the cool kids.

You know the ones. The older ones. The ones who seemed to know everything and had somewhere much more interesting to be.

If you were younger, you might spend half the evening hoping someone would let you join in.

Some things never change.

But everybody was there together.

We weren’t divided into separate groups with scheduled activities. The little kids, the older kids, the teenagers, and the adults all shared the same gathering. We grew up around one another, watching the older kids, eventually becoming the older kids ourselves.

The adults had their world. We had ours. And the two worlds overlapped constantly.

It was a whole little universe inside somebody’s house.

The Men Had the Bar. The Women Had the Kitchen. We Had the Basement.

At church gatherings, there was usually a familiar arrangement.

The men were often around the bar, drinking, talking, playing cards, sometimes chess, or whatever else occupied their time.

The women were in the kitchen.

And let me tell you, the kitchen was not a quiet place.

There was coffee, conversation, laughter, and plenty of discussion about husbands, children, relatives, and the general business of life. The women were hilarious. They had stories, opinions, observations, and apparently an unlimited supply of things to talk about.

They didn’t go to therapy. They went to church.

The kitchen was their gathering place, their social club, their unofficial news desk, and probably the place where the most information was exchanged.

Meanwhile, the children were everywhere.

Some were running around. Some were playing. Some were trying to keep up with the older kids. Some teenagers were busy with their own social lives.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, there was music and dancing.

Nobody needed to announce that the evening had begun. It was already happening.

And the funny thing is, all these little worlds existed together. The men, the women, the children, the teenagers — everyone had somewhere to be, someone to talk to, and something to do.

It was noisy. It was busy. It was familiar.

And it was ours.

We Could Turn Almost Anything Into a Dance Floor

I attended Serbian church as a child. There was Sunday school, Serbian language class, religion class, and traditional dance practice.

So, yes, there was some structure to our cultural education.

But the real education was happening everywhere else, too.

We danced kolo at church gatherings, visited other churches to dance, and traveled around the United States for Serbian events and activities.

And the bus rides deserve their own mention.

We would dance kolo on the bus while traveling to other churches.

Think about that for a moment. Some children passed the time on road trips by watching movies or playing games. We could turn a bus ride into another opportunity to dance.

We had different dances, too, including what we called the kissing kolo.

And if you were a teenager, dancing kolo had an additional benefit: you could try to position yourself next to a boy you liked.

Very subtle. Very sophisticated.

You could be concentrating on the steps while simultaneously wondering whether the boy next to you had noticed you.

That was part of growing up, too.

We weren’t thinking about cultural preservation. We were thinking about dancing, friends, boys, and having a good time.

The traditions were there, but so was ordinary teenage life.

We Were American Kids, Too

This is something I think is important to remember.

We weren’t living in some isolated little Serbian bubble, completely disconnected from the world around us.

We were growing up in America. We read American books, listened to American music, watched American television, went to American schools, and had the same kinds of childhood interests as other kids our age.

I could spend time reading Sweet Valley High, listening to New Kids on the Block, and then go to Serbian church on Sunday.

There was no contradiction in that.

I didn’t wake up every morning thinking about being Serbian-American. I wasn’t analyzing my identity or wondering how I would pass my culture down to the next generation.

I was just living my life.

At home, there was Serbian. At church, there was Serbian. Around our parents’ friends, there was Serbian. At gatherings, there was Serbian music, dancing, food, conversation, and all the familiar expressions and personalities that made those spaces feel like home.

And then I went back to my American books and music.

Both worlds belonged to me.

I think sometimes we imagine cultural identity as something very formal: language lessons, traditions, holidays, history, and important family stories. Those things matter, of course. But so do the ordinary things that don’t look particularly important when you’re living through them.

The coffee visits. The crowded kitchens. The children running through somebody’s house. The adults laughing. The music playing in the background. The bus rides. The dancing. The older kids you wanted to impress. The words you picked up without even realizing it.

That was culture, too.

Different Countries, Familiar Childhoods

And here is where I think the experience becomes bigger than my own Serbian-American childhood.

Because we weren’t the only ones.

Children of immigrant parents from all kinds of backgrounds grew up with their own versions of these experiences. The languages were different. The food was different. The music, customs, religions, and traditions were different.

But underneath all those differences, there was something familiar.

There were parents trying to build a life in a new country while holding on to the world they came from. There were children trying to fit in at school while living by a different set of expectations at home. There were family friends, gatherings, big conversations, accents, jokes, and traditions that seemed completely ordinary to us.

There were children who understood one language better than they spoke it. Children who answered their parents in English even when the questions came in another language. Children who could recognize the sound of their parents’ native language from across a crowded room.

There were parents who knew everyone, or at least seemed to know someone who knew everyone.

There were gatherings where the adults could talk for hours and the children somehow managed to occupy an entire house.

There were mothers who could turn a kitchen into a command center. Fathers who had their own gathering spots. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, family friends, neighbors, and children of every age.

And there were teenagers everywhere, trying to look grown-up while still being somebody’s child.

Different backgrounds. Familiar childhoods.

We might not have understood one another’s languages, but we could probably recognize one another’s family gatherings.

Because underneath the cultural differences, we were all just kids trying to grow up.

We wanted friends. We wanted to fit in. We wanted to be included with the older kids. We laughed at our parents. We listened to music they didn’t understand. We occasionally pretended not to hear them calling our names.

We wanted independence, but we also wanted to belong.

And our parents wanted us to remember where we came from, even as they encouraged us to make a life in the country where we were growing up.

Somewhere between those two wishes, we became ourselves.

Our Parents Had Their World. We Had Ours. And Somehow, They Became One.

Our parents carried memories of another country. They had childhoods, families, friendships, and experiences that existed long before we were born.

We inherited pieces of that world without necessarily knowing what they meant.

We inherited names, expressions, recipes, habits, stories, songs, and ways of gathering. We learned how to behave in two different environments. We learned when to speak English and when to speak Serbian. We learned which expressions made our parents laugh and which ones made them give us that look.

And we learned that home could mean more than one thing.

For our parents, America was the place where they were building a future. For us, it was the place where we were growing up. The old country was sometimes a place we visited, sometimes a place we heard about, sometimes a place we imagined through the stories of the adults around us.

We were not exactly like our parents. We were not exactly like everyone else around us. We were a little of both.

And sometimes a little confused about the whole arrangement.

But that was part of the experience.

We Didn’t Know We Were Making Memories

The funny thing about childhood is that you don’t recognize the important things while they’re happening.

You don’t think, I should remember this because one day I’ll write about it.

You don’t think about how the sound of adults talking in another room, the smell of coffee, the music at a gathering, or the sight of children running around somebody’s house might stay with you.

You don’t know that one day you will try to reconstruct those evenings from a handful of images and feelings.

I don’t remember every detail. I couldn’t tell you exactly what we played, what everybody said, or what happened at every gathering. Childhood isn’t an archive. Sometimes it is a collection of sounds, faces, places, and feelings that stay with you long after the details have disappeared.

But I remember enough to recognize the world.

I remember being a child in a community where there were always other children around. I remember the older kids, the teenagers, the adults, the kitchen, the bar, the basement, the music, and the dancing.

I remember visiting our parents’ friends, traveling to other churches, and turning bus rides into opportunities to dance.

I remember speaking English, throwing Serbian words into conversations, and saying bogami whenever somebody needed to make absolutely sure a story was true.

I remember Sweet Valley High. I remember New Kids on the Block. I remember imitating my parents’ accents and laughing with them.

I remember being American and Serbian without feeling that I had to choose between the two.

And I remember that we had fun.

A lot of it.

Of course, time moved on. People grew up. Friendships changed. Some people drifted apart. The Serbian community changed, too, especially as new families arrived after the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The world we knew as children was not exactly the same world that came afterward.

But that is another story.

This one is about the ordinary days and gatherings that made up a childhood. About growing up with immigrant parents, finding your place between two worlds, and discovering that the things you once took for granted were quietly becoming part of you.

It is about parents who spoke one language at home, children who answered in another, and a generation that could move between two worlds without giving it much thought.

It is about women in the kitchen, men around the bar, kids in the basement, teenagers looking for the cool kids, and music somewhere in the background.

It is about kolo on a bus, Sweet Valley High on the bookshelf, New Kids on the Block in the headphones, and bogami serving as the official stamp of truth.

We didn’t set out to preserve anything. We weren’t trying to create a cultural legacy.

We were just kids.

We were laughing, dancing, playing, visiting, growing up, and occasionally embarrassing our parents by imitating their accents.

And perhaps that is one of the nicest things about the way we grew up.

Our parents didn’t have to sit us down and explain that we were carrying a culture. We were already living inside it.

And maybe children of immigrants everywhere understand that feeling.

Different languages. Different traditions. Different stories.

But the same childhood business of trying to grow up, make friends, fit in, make our parents proud, and have as much fun as possible along the way.

And if somebody didn’t believe us?

Well, we had a word for that.

Bogami.

Milanka Šulejić
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