I would argue that we were raised to see the best parts of our culture and that some of it was made visible via Bollywood. However, this was a world we visited rather than took at face value as the life we should be expected to lead. It is that which has allowed me to hold these films dear whilst still being critical.
In Max Lobe‘s novel Vertraulichkeiten (Confidentialities, not yet translated into English), a nameless first-person narrator who lives in Switzerland travels to Cameroon, where he grew up, and in a village somewhere on the road between Duala and Jaunde, an old woman tells him about the Cameroonian struggle for independence.
We could introduce Sharon Dodua Otoo by way of the many prestigious accolades she has received, but really her work speaks for itself. At poco.lit. we’ve been fans of her work for a long time and are delighted to present a conversation between her and her talented translator Jon Cho Polizzi as part of our event series “author meets translator”. We’ll be talking about the novel Adas Raum (Ada’s Room/Ada’s Realm), about humour, Berliner Schnauze, and doing politics in language and literature. Join us!
In the novel Messer, Zungen (Knives, Tongues, not yet translated into English) Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner approaches the story of a South African family that later moves to Germany in an experimental, fragmentary manner.
Culture and religion aren’t merely things you carry with you. For some reason, I thought they were just two significant chunks of the building material shaping the me-ness. But I learned over time that they are things which largely exist in boxes.
In 2024 we will start a new project with the kind support of the Lotto Foundation Berlin: [poco.lit. space]. We want to create various spaces to discuss and learn about postcolonialism. One of these spaces will be our online magazine and we are looking for your contributions. This is our first call for submissions, more will follow throughout the next year.
In Rowohlt Verlag’s newly launched series, rororo Entdeckungen, Magda Birkmann and Nicole Seifert select novels by remarkable but forgotten female authors from the twentieth century for publication. Last week we had the pleasure of talking to Magda Birkmann about this series and the novel Daddy was a number runner (Eine Tochter Harlems) by Louise Meriwether.
In her collection of essays, we move with Powles between London, where she currently lives, Shanghai, China and Aotearoa-New Zealand. She talks about growing up in Wellington with the constant fear of a major earthquake, how she prepares her own tofu during the coronavirus lockdown, and her connection to the kōwhai tree.
Last night around ten o’clock, Jess drank a mug of Horlicks with a Hershey’s Kiss dropped inside, scavenged from an expired bag she found in a cabinet. It was white and fossilized by now, but with some vigorous stirring, she managed to melt it into a blob which she ate at the end with a vanilla cream wafer biscuit.