Mutoni im Un/Happyland : die Bürde weißer Retter*innen in Tete Loepers Roman "Barfuß in Deutschland"
- In Tete Loeper's novel "Barefoot in Germany" (2020), Black first-person narrator Mutoni from Rwanda recounts her experiences as a marriage migrant, sex worker, maid, and caregiver in Germany, a supposed "Happyland" where racism is considered the offense of "others": bad individuals and Nazis. However, Loeper's white savior characters are both nice people and (unwitting) racists, while some of Mutoni's Black sisters behave in discriminatory ways as well. Drawing on critical race theory and imagology, this article shows how the novel deconstructs and appropriates stereotypical images from "'colorblind' Europe" on both a thematic and formal-aesthetic level. By engaging with a comparative and transnational frame of reference that goes beyond a monolingual white canon of theory and literature, the article reveals the novel's connections to other Black texts and genres, as well as its literary strategies in dealing with identity (politics).
| Author: | Sandra FolieORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-835481 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.16995/gc.10915 |
| ISSN: | 2755-0923 |
| Parent Title (German): | Genealogy+Critique |
| Publisher: | Open Library of Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London |
| Place of publication: | London |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | German |
| Year of Completion: | 2023 |
| Year of first Publication: | 2023 |
| Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
| Release Date: | 2024/04/09 |
| Tag: | Loeper, Tete African European literature; Imagology; Loeper, Tete: Barefoot in Germany; Slave narrative; White saviorism |
| GND Keyword: | Einwanderung <Motiv>; Rassismus <Motiv>; Critical race theory; Imagologie |
| Volume: | 9 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Page Number: | 21 |
| First Page: | 2 |
| Last Page: | 22 |
| Note: | Gefördert durch die Europäische Union (ERC, AFROPEA, Grant agreement no. 101075842) |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | 8 Literatur / 80 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft / 800 Literatur und Rhetorik |
| Sammlungen: | CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft |
| CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft / Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin | |
| Licence (German): |  Creative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |
