Dr. Biz Nijdam will be moderating an event on German comics and international dialogue on March 11, featuring Dr. Priscilla Layne and Birgit Weyhe, who will be discussing Weyhe’s new graphic novel Rude Girl.
Register here via Zoom: https://global.unc.edu/event/german-comics-and-international-dialogue-birgit-weyhes-rude-girl-2022/
From the publisher Avant-Verlag: “In times of globalization we can move anywhere, work from anywhere, live anywhere – assuming we have the right skin color, sufficient education and most importantly: the right passport. As part of an exchange program, the white Birgit Weyhe from Germany taught at a US college. During a conference of American Germanists in the Midwest, she was confronted with accusations of cultural appropriation. Does she abuse her privileges as a white writer when telling stories about black people?
“She meets Priscilla Layne, an Afro-American German studies professor with Caribbean roots. She is an ‘Oreo’ – too white for the black classmates and her skin is too dark for the white ones. She decides to rebel against everyone and everything at once by joining the skinhead movement in her youth and becoming a rude girl.
“But how is Birgit Weyhe supposed to tell a life story like this? What mistakes should you avoid? The narrative construct itself becomes its own narrative level in this biography.”
Featured image: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
