A Teenaged Memoir of Surviving Genocide and the Dangers of Hate

How does hatred become so intense that it turns whole groups of people violently against each other? In the early 1990s, Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, a then-teenager in Bosnia and Herzegovina, survived the Serbian siege meant to wipe out Bosnian Muslims like her. For three years, she lived under the constant threat of bombs, sniper fire, and starvation. She survived in part thanks to a stray cat that attached itself to her family. Today Sabic-El-Rayess is a professor at Columbia University, and she has a memoir for young adults called “The Cat I Never Named.” (Originally aired October 1st, 2020)