“Who we want to be.” Lena Gorelik in Conversation about her Writing with Saskia Fischer
Wed., Sept. 18, 20246:00 - 7:30 pm ET (US)
Hybrid Online and In-Person
Mandel Reading Room 303, Mandel Center for Humanities, Brandeis University Campus
**Refreshments will be served for in-person attendees.**
About the Event
Whether as a journalist, essayist, or author of novels, plays, and short stories, questions of belonging, migration, and the German memory culture, as well as the relationship between literature and sociopolitical engagement in general, play a central role in Lena Gorelik's writing. In her texts, she not only draws attention to a pluralistic, post-migrant reality, but also presents it in all its ambivalence in an aesthetically complex manner. Her writing reflects on the possibilities of literature, but also on the voices and stories that receive little or no attention in the German public sphere. “For me, literature is a place where the world is put up for negotiation, it is a medium through which we try to define who we are, perhaps who we want to be,” Lena Gorelik said in an interview. With literary scholar Saskia Fischer, Lena Gorelik will discuss her writing and poetics with reference to her novel “Mehr schwarz als lila,” a text for young adults about the German culture of remembrance, and her latest bestseller “Wer wir sind,” which autobiographically describes her migration as a young girl from Russia to Germany.
About the Speakers
