Queer, Working-Class and Kurdish Experiences: Narrative Interventions in Contemporary German Literature

This IWD panel offered a space to think critically about the kind of marginalised voices and stories that can be told in the contemporary German literary scene. As considerations of queerness and gender currently tend to be left out of discussions around racist realities in Germany, the panel aimed to foreground intersectional perspectives on postmigrant experiences. At the centre of the discussion were Aydemir’s Dschinns (Hanser, 2022) [Djinns] and Taha’s Im Bauch der Königin (DuMont, 2020) [In the Belly of the Queen, V&Q Books, 2023, trans. by Grashina Gabelmann]. With innovative aesthetics and narrative structures, Aydemir’s and Taha’s writing intervenes in traditional forms of storytelling and opens new pathways of thinking and analysis. The event was generously supported by the Cambridge DAAD Research Hub, the Association of German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland, Women in German Studies, the Schroeder fund, the Tiarks fund, the Cambridge Q+ Network, the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement and Newnham College.