The Beauty of Difference - New Stories Celebrating Diversity

Diversity is not a given in Germany in the year 2022 – it has to be fought for, again and...

Diversity is not a given in Germany in the year 2022 – it has to be fought for, again and again. We already know what it is that separates us from one another, just as we know who is driving and multiplying this separation. The debates are getting more heated, the trenches are dug deeper, and it is getting ever harder to communicate and find commonalities. German. What is that supposed to be, actually? Who is this “we” we’re always talking about? In 212 letters, the contributors to this volume investigate what it is that unites people. What really matters in times of crisis. The result is letters that turn out to be soft where you had expected hardness. An attempt at rapprochement in hardened times.

In Struggle and longing in the heart of society, theologian and author Stephan Anpalagan writes about homeland. Our homeland. It's...

In Struggle and longing in the heart of society, theologian and author Stephan Anpalagan writes about homeland. Our homeland. It's a book about people who say "I love this country so much. But this country doesn't love me back." It's a story about the heartache felt by people who have lived in our country for years, decades and generations and still can't find a home. It's a book about the "we" in "We are the people" and the "you" in "You are Germany". It's a book about Germany. A book about Germany. A story about the Italian guest workers, German football, German dominant culture and the German railway. It shows how racism in our country is increasing the lack of skilled workers and what we can do to prevent it. But most importantly, how we can make this country a better home. For all of us.

Take away the Alps tells the story of a childhood in Switzerland in a series of vivid images. A nameless...

Take away the Alps tells the story of a childhood in Switzerland in a series of vivid images. A nameless brother and sister who speak in unison. A home with Ma and Pa, who appear in the form of a four-armed deity. The bicycles on which the children race tothe places where they play: the telephone box, the rubbish dump, out in the reeds. And then a new child joins the class and paves the way for the siblings to venture down from their own inner mountains.

In his debut work, Ralph Tharayil tells a unique an coming-of-age story about the experience of integration, and the language and bodies that resist this integration.

Journalist, political scientist and TV presenter Hadija Haruna-Oelker has long explored the topics of racism, intersectionality and discrimination. She is...

Journalist, political scientist and TV presenter Hadija Haruna-Oelker has long explored the topics of racism, intersectionality and discrimination. She is convinced that we all to some extent share each other's views, that we can learn from other people, and that we should listen more. In this book, she tells her personal story in the context of socio-political thought, and discusses among other things our perception of difference, solidarity, changing perspectives, empowerment, and the beauty of diversity. So we can go about unlearning misconceptions, and think differently together – by creating new spaces, finding our voice, and meeting others with a curious and open mind.Nominated for the 2022 Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the non-fiction/essay category.

On finding refuge in a foreign language - a vital story about being an outsider, about courage, and the power...

On finding refuge in a foreign language - a vital story about being an outsider, about courage, and the power of language.During the 2009 protests in Iran, A., a student and artist, is forced to leave. He takes with him the memories of a youth full of violence. He becomes a refugee, openly despised and forced to endure not only isolation but also hunger and humiliation in camps and shelters. In Vienna, he meets Sarah, who falls head over heels in love with him. A., who finds it hard to open up, becomes both an object of study and a source of support for her – even though he himself needs help.

How does it feel to be ostracised because of your appearance? How can a family settle in Germany if they...

How does it feel to be ostracised because of your appearance? How can a family settle in Germany if they have to live out of packed suitcases due to fear of being deported? How can a child simply be a child if their first memories are marked by worry, shame and sadness? If they didn't go to nursery or have their own bed?

In this personal book, Hami Nguyen addresses issues of racism and class through the lens of her own life story. It is especially vital reading given how anti-Asian racism is often left out of the debate, as Asian-read people are considered assimilated or invisible.

The washing baskets were always full – not with dirty laundry but unpaid bills that her mother couldn’t settle despite...

The washing baskets were always full – not with dirty laundry but unpaid bills that her mother couldn’t settle despite how she worked. When Marlen Hobrack looks back on her deprived childhood in an uneducated household, she realises that it has little in common with the stories of people from middle-class backgrounds – a class she now belongs to as a successful journalist. But as a single mother at 19 who was born in East Germany, does she really belong or is she walking a fine line between the two worlds? Hobrack clears up the middle-class myths of equal opportunity and social advancement. It also shows how, at the heart of every debate surrounding identity politics, is also the issue of class.

The children from the high-rise housing estate in Bremen-Nord know exactly where their families come from: Turkey, Russia, Albania. Only...

The children from the high-rise housing estate in Bremen-Nord know exactly where their families come from: Turkey, Russia, Albania. Only Karla is a little different. She knows that her grandmother came to Germany from Istanbul as a guest worker in the 1960s and that the family has Armenian roots, but they don't talk about it. When Karla's grandmother dies, the name of a woman, Lilit, appears, along with an address in Armenia. Karla manages to persuade her father to go on a trip together - to a homeland that neither of them has ever set foot in. Laura Cwiertnia tells an impressive and moving story about what it feels like to be on the margins of society. And what it's like to have no story to share with others.

Somewhere in provincial West Germany, a year after Chernobyl, the first-person narrator is born, a “hybrid of my mother and...

Somewhere in provincial West Germany, a year after Chernobyl, the first-person narrator is born, a “hybrid of my mother and father.” But her intact nuclear family doesn’t last long: her Turkish father (so overweight “you can barely do anything with him that involves gravity”) dies. Left alone, the daughter and mother are a toxic combination. The girl finds her way out of a damaged family arrangement but her father remains a revenant, proving that even someone who is absent can still be too much. Önder’s multiple times awarded debut is a wild novel about the body, foreignness, and arrival, about identity and difference that keeps surprising us with its boldness: fast and smart and, despite its darkness, insanely funny.

Journalist Elisabeth Wellershaus has known what it feels like to be an outsider ever since her earliest childhood, thanks to...

Journalist Elisabeth Wellershaus has known what it feels like to be an outsider ever since her earliest childhood, thanks to the attitudes she experienced from other people. She grew up in the middle-class district of Volksdorf in Hamburg with her white grandparents and white mother. Her Black father lived on a cocoa plantation in Equatorial Guinea as a child and moved to the Costa del Sol in the 1960s. As a Black German living between Hamburg, Malaga and the worlds of her parents, she experienced otherness as a complex construct. In her book, she paints a portrait of this complex, omnipresent and enriching phenomenon - and shows how it connects us.

Jaffa is Sabiha and Ahmed’s home. It is where they’re raising their sons, and where they have opened their own...

Jaffa is Sabiha and Ahmed’s home. It is where they’re raising their sons, and where they have opened their own cinema. But when Israel declares independence in 1948 and the Arab-Israeli war breaks out, the family is forced to flee. They embark on an Odyssey that takes them first to Lebanon and then to Turkey, searching for a new home.Seventy years later, Joana Osman travels to Israel in search of her family’s past. Who were these two people, who raised her father on the run? What was the trip like which invisibly, but decisively, affected her own youth?

Two sisters: one works to tackle all the injustices of our present day, the other strives for the middle-class family...

Two sisters: one works to tackle all the injustices of our present day, the other strives for the middle-class family ideal; for one, being Black is a political category, for the other, it is qbout being a mother. In her debut novel, Yandé Seck explores the ambivalences large and small that have to navigate in a clever, illuminating and subtly witty way.