Frame and Preparation
Der Hof im Spiegel: Erzählungen
Conceptual Frames and Background
- Cold War Berlin
- Migration
- Race and racism in Germany
- Language
- Visibility and (self-)identity
- Gender
Introduction
Discuss this series (or individual selections) of short stories by Emine Sevgi Özdamar.
Preparation
Provide biographical information about the author. Perhaps of interest is a discussion about the author’s own relationship to the German language and her identity as a woman of color living in Germany—though it is crucial not to read the story as autobiographical or as a smooth conduit between protagonist and author. Rather, such a point can help contextualize the experiences of women of color in German society and culture.
Text and Discussion
- What role does the mirror play in the story and in the construction of the narrator’s identity?
- How does visibility, of the self to the self and to others/society, inflect her identity?
- What is the protagonist’s relationship to the city? How does move in it, perceive, feel herself in it?
- What are the various voices floating around the story? To whom do they belong and to what effect are they there? What does this say about the experience of the city, its substance as a habitat for humans, and one’s self as a resident of such a cacophony of human sounds?
- How does the protagonist’s dead mother make herself present in the story/narration and to her daughter? What role does she play in the protagonist’s life?
- Connect the mirror to the dead mother. How are lines of kinship and its powers of identity formation formulated and articulated through vision, sound, touch, etc.?
- Describe the temporalities present in the story, especially regarding the many memories that make up the story. What sort of idea of time or history do we receive here?
- How is the everyday, mundane life of a woman described here? What is its significance to the narrative? What importance is the quotidian given in the world of the story?
- How do elements of race, foreignness, and language come to the fore here? How are they marked and to what effect?
- Can we read the language and style of the book through the lenses of gender and race? If so, how, and to what effect?