I have always enjoyed reading diaries - they manage to open a window into another's life through the shared experiences of the mundane and what we have in common builds a bridge of empathy to what we don't.

Zlata was a typical middle class tween in the 90s: singing along to the latest Madonna and Michael Jackson hits, watching Fresh Prince of Bel Air, worrying about biology grades and piano recitals, dressing up for a friend's birthday party. And suddenly overnight her life became unrecognizable. She wonders: Is this really the same neighborhood? Is it a dream? Near the end of the diary when she is entering 7th grade she remarks that it seems as if she is still in 5th grade (when the war started) ... time passes but our minds have trouble keeping up with reality, how many of us today recognize that feeling of being stuck in a 2020 time loop?

It must be unimaginably terrorizing to live in a city under siege. The unpredictability of the neighborhood sniper (Will Joco ruin the birthday party in the garden today?), the random shelling, access to gas, water, electricity, and food, all interspersed with periods of malaise and numbing boredom. Zlata gives us an intimate opportunity to see everyday life in a war zone.

Zlata provides little political context (obviously... I remember not understanding a single word of what adults were talking about when I was 12), and the Wikipedia article about it could stand for some improvement. The following is from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
"In 1991, Yugoslavia’s republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) had a population of 4 million, composed of three main ethnic groups: Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim, 44 percent), Serb (31 percent), and Croat (17 percent), as well as Yugoslav (8 percent).

On April 5, 1992, the government of Bosnia declared its independence from Yugoslavia. The creation of an independent Bosnian nation that would have a Bosniak majority was opposed by Bosnian Serbs, who launched a military campaign to secure coveted territory and “cleanse” Bosnia of its Muslim civilian population. The Serbs targeted Bosniak and Croatian civilians in areas under their control, in what has become known as 'ethnic cleansing.'

During the subsequent civil war that lasted from 1992 to 1995, an estimated 100,000 people were killed, 80 percent of whom were Bosniaks. In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed as many as 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from the town of Srebrenica. It was the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust.

Fighting ended after a NATO bombing campaign forced Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table, and a peace agreement, the Dayton Accords, was signed in 1995."

With this larger context in mind, it is easier to understand some of the comments that Zlata makes. She mentions refugees fleeing what I guess were Bosnian Serb-controlled cities and moving into her neighborhood in Sarajevo. Imagine Sarajevo being a better option! She also says that trying to separate the people along ethnic lines makes no sense to the people themselves. Families often contain all three ethnicities and no one even knows who is what, she writes. Though this topic appears a couple times in her diary, Zlata never openly identifies with any ethnicity. What she does mention in nearly every entry is how much she wants peace.