7 Writing Back to Liberal Discourse
While José F.A. Oliver and Zehra Çirak question the “normalcy” of the dominant culture in their poetry rather than dwell on their own status as other, Feridun Zaimoglu creates an alternative identity that refuses to define itself as part of a homogenous ethnic group. Instead, it sees itself connected to a transnational “ethnic” consciousness.Enfant terribleof the contemporary German literary scene, Zaimoglu¹ has set out to save German migrant writing from the stigma of being “lachrymose, sycophantic, and publicly subsidized”² “Gastarbeiterliteratur” that casts the migrant in the role of the perpetual victim. He argues that the often discussed identity
Chapter, 2001