Silence is My Mother Tongue
Sulaiman Addonia’s second novel offers a chaotic depiction of the inner workings of a refugee camp in Sudan following an exceptional and exceptionally close pair of siblings.
more...Anna von Rath
social justice and diversity trainer, and editor of poco. lit.
macht.sprache. & Artificially Correct: Diskussion mit Lann Hornscheidt und Şeyda Kurt (Part 1)
On 4 June, 2021, we hosted a discussion event with Lann Hornscheidt and Şeyda Kurt in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut. As part of the projects macht.sprache. and Artificially Correct, we were able to learn from the guests about ways of dealing with politically sensitive terms in writing and translating.
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Sister Outsider
Sister Outsider by African-American, lesbian, feminist poet and activist Audre Lorde is a foundational text for anyone interested in intersectionality and reflecting on their own social positions.
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Sula
Sula, first published in 1973, is the second novel by Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, whose writing offered up a multi-faceted language about Black experiences, and which continues to serve as a great source of inspiration to many.
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Where Jhumpa Lahiri finds herself linguistically
Jhumpa Lahiri wrote her latest novel in Italian. Afterwards she translated it into English herself. The deliberate shift in her own language focus invites me to question several things: the linguistic pressure to conform that migrants of Colour often experience. And the common idea that people can only express themselves well in one language – their mother tongue.
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Radikale Zärtlichkeit – Warum Liebe politisch ist
The starting point for writing her book “Radical Tenderness – Why Love is Political” was a discomfort with common images of love that are shaped by power relations, which empty the word of any real content. This critical view of love evoked Şeyda Kurt’s preference for the term tenderness: implying ways of behaving that couldn’t be further from any form of violence.
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The Shadow King
Maaza Mengiste’s historical novel tells the story of the Italian invasion in Ethiopia in 1935. It focuses on anti-colonial resistance and the role of Ethiopian women, some of whom became soldiers to join the fight against the colonizers.
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The Power of Multilingualism
The writer Olga Grjasnowa, whom many readers probably associate with her novel All Russians Love Birch Trees (Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt), was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, and came to Germany when she was eleven. In her recently published non-fiction book, The Power of Multilingualism – On Origins and Diversity (which has not […]
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“Everyone shares the responsibility of reducing the unconscious bias in artificial intelligence”: An interview with Kenza Ait Si Abbou
As part of our macht.sprache. / case.sensitive. project, we’re speaking to various experts who deal with language, translation or artificial intelligence. Kenza Ait Si Abbou explains some of the challenges in the field of artificial intelligence to us (e.g. in form of unconscious bias) but always stays solution-oriented.
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“At some point, you have to hand in your translation”: An interview with Anabelle Assaf
As part of our macht.sprache. / case.sensitive. project, we’re speaking to various experts who deal with language, translation or artificial intelligence. Anabelle Assaf offers insights into very specific translation decisions related to gender, race and different forms of English.
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