Czesław Miłosz wrote, “Language is the only homeland.” I didn’t understand that sentence when I first read it. I was too busy trying to speak correctly—in English, in Croatian, in a blend that neve…

It would’ve been funny if it hadn’t been official—if it hadn’t come with flags and checkpoints and new textbooks for children. And the more official the rules became, the more an underground language—humorous, grotesque, barbed—rose up in protest.

We created entire anti-dictionaries, full of words not meant for permanence but for play. For a release.