Offensive, discursive, narrative: just three of the attributes that could be mentioned in the context of publicist Mely Kiyak’s weekly column on the website of Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater.
Browsing: Literature
A railroad underground, accessible via shafts and separate stations, built to escape racist enslavement – U.S. author Colson Whitehead literarily expands a metaphor that originally describes an informal network of abolitionists into an actual, underground rail connection.
The term “Madgermanes” is used in Mozambique to refer to the approximately 15-20,000 people who worked as “contract workers” in the GDR between 1979 and 1991 – and were subsequently deported from the GDR, having been cheated out of most of their wages by Mozambique.
In this literary essay, Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina, drawing on an interview with Senegalese musician and politician Youssou N’Dour, tells of colonialism and learning to swim, of politics and poetry, of music and essentialist understandings of culture and identity.
A sigh, two quenched eggs, the bubbling of boiling water: this is how Sharon Dodua Otoo’s text begins, for which she was awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize at the 2016 “Days of German-Language Literature” in Klagenfurt.
The series of talks curated by Grada Kilomba invited refugee artists to the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin between 2015 and 2017. The focus of the 13 talks was the question of how systems of knowledge and representation can be artistically and politically transformed, de-colonized, rewritten.
In 2015, the first issue of the literary magazine PS – Politisch Schreiben was published under the theme “Competition & Canon”. On the newspaper’s website, in addition to articles from the various issues, there is also an extensive list of links to friendly (art) projects and people.
In her autobiographically influenced comic, Marjane Satrapi tells of growing up during the so-called “Islamic Revolution” in Iran in the late 1970s, the Iran-Iraq War, and her early exile in the diaspora in Vienna.
In her manuscript “Keine Angst, mein Herz” (Don’t be afraid, my heart), Berlin-based author and performer Olivia Wenzel tells of racist attributions and forms of resistance, of growing up and reflecting, of right-wing terror and images of fear between Brandenburg, New York, Berlin and Thuringia.
Canadian David. In this graphic novel, H.T. Wong uses the Wong family as an example to tell the story of the first Chinese immigrants to the United States. A story that is marked by resistance to a racist policy of discrimination over the entire narrative period of five generations.
Art Spiegelman tells the story of Auschwitz survivor Wladek in his graphic novel. The character is based on Spiegelmann’s father, and the narrative setting – the father telling his son about the Holocaust and his memories of it – also bears strong autobiographical traits.
In this comic, Vina Yun addresses the story(s) of Korean migration to Vienna in the 1970s, using the example of her family. In different episodes, the lives and everyday experiences of two generations, mother and daughter, are told.