Generational Divide

New Yorkers are divided by class, race, and ethnicity. Teaching English Composition to a multiethnic and multiracial group of students, most of them foreign-born, I was struck by the sharp generational divide.
In class we examined ads for Amnesty International. One showed two African refugee girls, possibly child soldiers, holding machine guns. They were looking straight into the camera with solemn eyes. Below the photograph there was blue sky and the words “imagine” and “nothing to kill or die for.” I worried that my students might not know Amnesty International, John Lennon’s famous song or John Lennon. I wanted to play the song for them, but—technologically stuck in the last century— I owned the record, not the CD. I couldn’t figure out how to download the song to my computer or how to create an MP 3 file.
My students, 17 to 20 years old, knew nothing of Amnesty International and its mission, but they were touched by the photo and in favor of protecting the dignity and rights of all people. None of them had heard the John Lennon song before; three or four knew who John Lennon was. “That Beatle with the funny glasses,” one student said. “He lived near Central Park and was murdered by a deranged fan,” another said.
We discussed the role that images play in our lives. My students — mostly computer science and engineering majors — didn't mind being visually bombarded all the time. They didn’t think it was wrong that more Americans get their news from TV than from newspapers. They thought it was awesome that they could take a photo with their iPhone and instantly send it to their cousins in Ghana, the Philippines, or Korea. One boy made fun of his mother who still writes real letters to her sister in Colombia.
“Maybe your mother’s sister does not own a computer,” I said.
“My mother is forty-five,” José said. “Too old to figure out e-mail.”
I tried to defend his mother; I tried to make a case for handwriting. “A handwritten letter is so much more personal,” I said.
My students didn’t think so.
“Do you want to get a love letter or condolence letter by e-mail?” I asked. “Sure,” they said. “That’s the best way of sending anything.”
Declining book sales and folding newspapers worry me. “Will computer screens replace books as our dominant way of reading?” I asked.
“No one will read books any longer,” Pram said. “We’ll all have a Kindle or one of those devices.”
“It's better for the environment. Think of how many trees we save,” Nicola said.
“Books will become extinct like dinosaurs in no time,” Mamandou added.
I felt as if a soccer ball had hit my stomach. “How soon?” I asked.
“Ten years,” someone in the back of the room shouted.
“No way, I’ll give it six,” Mamandou said.
The class nodded in agreement. Ten years was too long of a time. It was so much more convenient to read on a computer screen. They didn't need libraries. They didn’t need books. They had the Internet! I was shocked and saddened. I love books. I love to touch them, smell them, turn their pages, and feel their weight in my hands. Opening a book for the first time is as exciting as falling for a new lover.
I left class and walked down the stairs of Shepard Hall with slumped shoulders. They are the future, I thought. Did that make me, at 55, a proud member of the international family of book lovers, an endangered species? I tried to picture the literary events and readings I attended recently. My students were wrong. People still loved literature! I thought about my favorite place in Manhattan, the Center for Fiction (formally the Mercantile Library) that holds the largest fiction collection in the entire United States. Every time I walk into the Midtown mansion, I am greeted by beautiful old wooden file cabinets. I love to pull out the handwritten index cards and hunt for a book. The place smells like a library.
I had met younger people, readers and writers there, didn't I?
I concentrated hard to re-create the last reading in my mind’s eye. A famous writer and not too many people in the audience. Half the chairs were empty. The average visitor, like me, was middle-aged and female.
What if my students are right?

The Ordeal of Being German

For most of my life being German felt like an ordeal, a full-time job. We dealt with our parents’ and grandparents’ guilt, the heavy load we had inherited. On American TV, my compatriots were Nazis, deranged psychiatrist, or Bavarians in Lederhosen. They were either barking orders or slapping their legs doing the Schuhplatter dance. That certainly didn't help me to feel any better about being German.
The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 was a life-changing event for me and for Germans no matter where they lived. The image of Nazi Germans was suddenly replaced by joyous Germans infecting the world with their good will and spirit. For the first time, I felt great being German and proud to belong to my nation. Overcome, I sat glued to the television with tears of joy streaming down my face. The next day everyone at work hugged me and congratulated me as if I had been responsible for bringing down the wall. Strangers invited me for a drink to celebrate the end of the Cold War. The parents of a Korean child in the school where I worked as a counselor brought me a flower. “We are happy and sad,” the father said. “We hope we are next,” his wife added.
After enthusiasm and celebration reality set in. Two million East Germans left their homes to seek their fortune elsewhere. In many parts of the former GDR, unemployment is in the double digits. East Germans earn 20% less than West Germans. The catch-up might take another twenty years. Germans are no longer surrounded by a cement wall but twenty years later a mental wall still exists. Many West Germans complain that their lives were better before reunification. Some East Germans feel nostalgic about their life in the GDR. The 1.3 trillion euro investment in the former East Germany—more than the entire Marshall plan for former West Germany—has not yielded the desired results.
With the exception of hosting the 2006 World Soccer Cup, Germans have not displayed joy and enthusiasm in large numbers. But now, at the twenty year anniversary of the fall of the wall, we allow ourselves to feel good once again. Here in New York, many events —readings, films and a dance performance —celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Columbia University hosted a conference “Freedom without Walls.” “Words without Borders” organized a reading and panel discussion at Idlewood Bookstore on November 10th to launch their new anthology The Wall in My Head. The book includes writers who witnessed the fall of the Iron Curtain and those who grew up in its wake. [Milan Kundera, Peter Schneider, Ryszard Kapuściński, Vladimir Sorokin, Victor Pelevin, Péter Esterházy, Andrzej Stasiuk, Muharem Bazdulj, Maxim Trudolubov, Dorota Masłowska, Uwe Tellkamp, Dan Sociu, David Zábranský, Christhard Läpple.]
At Idlewood, Polish writer Dorota Maslowska, German writer Kathrin Aehnlich and Romanian writer Dan Sociu read excerpts and spoke about how they witnessed the events at age six, twelve, and thirty-two. Eliot Borenstein, Chair of the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University, moderated.
Dan Sociu, a younger poet of the so-called “2000 Generation,” a movement Romanian literary critic called “Miserabilism”, brought down the house with his deadpan humor. Dorota Maslowska (Snow White and Russian Red) spoke about the difference of her generation to older, more established writers. “They want to write pretty literature; we want to rape literature,” she said. Kathrin Aehnlich read a hilarious segment from her latest book Everyone Dies, Even the Paddlefish in which teacher Aunt Edeltraud rules the children in an East German kindergarten with the iron fist of a prison warden.
Kathrin Aehnlich, a Leipzig native, was the only one old enough to not only have witnessed the fall of the wall but also to have actively participated in the Monday night demonstration that she believes prepared the fall of the wall.
The room was jam-packed. The audience asked a lot of questions. Most people stayed and engaged in lively conversation after the event. They polished off the hors d’oeuvres and drank the last drop of wine. The mood was festive. When the bookstore closed many were not ready to go home. I joined a group of German and American journalists and writers, a Dutch restaurant owner and a Canadian real estate agent at the Old Town Bar. There we continued our discussion over greasy bar food and Paulaner Beer.
My advice: have a beer, some mozzarella sticks, or if you prefer a piece of Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte. Indulge in being German. Bask in the fact that the fall of the wall was one of the few positive developments in recent world history. Be shameless. Who knows when we'll find such a good reason to party again?

An Evening with Yuri Andrukhovych

I had other plans for the evening, but when I heard that Yuri Andrukhovych was in town I changed my mind immediately. I had read his literary essays “Disorientation and Locality” and “My Europe” (co-published with the Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk) in the German translation and often found myself laughing out loud while reading. I had read his novel, Twelve Rings, which many consider his best work in the German translation. A few years ago Barbara Epler, editor-in-chief of New Directions, asked me to read the book, write a report and make a recommendation if his work might do well in the American market. Despite my enthusiasm and praise, New Directions decided against translation and publication. Yuri Andrukhovych’s work has been published in Poland, Germany, Canada, the United States, Hungary, Finland, Russia, Serbia, Italy, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Croatia, and Bulgaria. Unfortunately, he remains largely unknown to the American reader.
Cosponsored by the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University and the Kennan Institute this event was not advertised anywhere. Nevertheless the room on the top floor of the International Studies building with the spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline was packed mostly with native Ukrainian speakers.
Yuri Andrukhovych had forgotten his reading glasses. So he read little and told stories instead, thereby revealing his unique sense of humor and remarkable talent as a raconteur. He spoke about the origins of his poem “Werwolf Sutra.” In 1986 he had a grant to stay in an East German artist residency. In the surrounding forests of Wiepersdorf he found the ruins of a former Soviet army town with its barracks, firing ranges, and outhouses covered with graffiti.
He recounted the background story of his novels Recreations (CIUS Press, 1998), Perverzion (Northwestern University Press, 2005) and The Moscoviad (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2008) and read selected excerpts.
He touched on the problems of translation. “Werwolf Sutra,” for example, had not been translated into English from the Ukrainian original but from the Polish translation. Of the four prestigious international literary awards he won; three were awarded to him in Germany, the other in Poland. Asked why he was so well received in Germany, Yuri Andrukhovych pointed out that Germany stood out in Europe for its knowledge about Ukrainian literature. Highly professional translators are available to translate from Ukrainian into the German language. He noted that Germany historically had always looked East and to the Russians, idealizing a quality they thought they lacked. I thought about my love for Slavic literature and Slavic people (I married a Ukrainian!), my travels to Eastern Europe (my favorite destination) and the first friend I made in New York, Polina from Moscow. When she introduced me to her Russian friends I found them so much more passionate than the Germans. When the Russians were sad, they were desperate; when they were happy, they were ecstatic. In Germany wearing your heart on your sleeve was frowned upon.
At 9:00 PM the organizers of the event urged the audience to leave, but the majority remained. Most mingled, shared their reactions to the reading and lined up to have books signed, to take photos, and to question Yuri Andrukhovych. All the available books were sold immediately.
“It is more important to live than to write,” Andrukhovych stated at one point during the evening and the crowd seemed to take his word for it. It was a great event featuring an inspiring writer. It was a privilege to have met the author of this distinctive literature.
Before coming to New York Yuri Andrukhovych appeared at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. A video of that forum can be accessed at
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1424&fuseaction=topics.event_summary&event_id=550298
He is scheduled to go to Cleveland next. If you get a chance to hear and see him in person, by all means take it.

The European Book Club

I am a voracious reader. I read everywhere: on the couch, in the bath tub, in bed, on park benches, airplanes, busses, and in the subway. Reading, I shut out the world and immerse myself in the world the author has created for me. Reading is my solitary pleasure. The bond is between the writer and me. I have never allowed anyone in to share my pleasure. It felt as if I’d be letting the world in to watch me making love.
For that reason, I have never participated in a book club. The last time I discussed literature in a large group was more than 30 years ago in high school, more specifically my German Gymnasium. Back then, only one interpretation of a work of fiction was allowed, that of the teacher’s. I sat in class knowing that the teacher was wrong, that there was more than one way of looking at the text, that all interpretations had value. Writers are open-minded; they present the lives and motivations of even the most despicable characters and often do so without judgment. So it was with great trepidation that I attended my first book club meeting.
Fifty percent of all the books in translation published worldwide are translated from English, but only six percent are translated into English. This amounts to 400 foreign fiction books (of which approximately seven are German) per year translated into American English. The European Book Club was launched one year ago by the librarians of the Austrian, Czech, French, German, Italian, and Spanish Cultural Institutes in New York City to expose more Americans to the wonderful literature of their homelands. From the beginning, it was a huge success. The Polish, Romanian, and Norwegian libraries have subsequently joined.
I was prepared. Reading Katherina Hacker’s The Have-Nots had not been a pleasurable solitary experience. In fact, I had to force myself to get through the story of well-to-do thirty-somethings, who like the rest of Germany, seemed to suffer from low-level chronic depression. I had a hard time following the multitude of characters and the simultaneous stories lines. I didn't care for the 9/11 reference, the wealthy protagonists, their pain, angst, and ambiguity. I wondered why Hacker had won the 2006 German Book Prize.
At the Goethe Institute’s new downtown location, twelve women and one man sat in a circle. Unsure how to act, I sat back to observe. Many participants found the novel difficult to read. Some had not finished the book. The group explored the motivation of the characters. The protagonists were one-dimensional and lacking in empathy. Had that been the writer's intention? We discussed the different prose style of American and German writers: great storytelling, entertaining literature as opposed to literature as Bildungsauftrag that made the reader work hard.
In no time I felt totally at ease and plunged into the discussion. We jumped around quite a bit, touched on the role of Holocaust in post World War II German consciousness, German guilt, and Herta Müller winning The Nobel Prize. Should we read her next? We discussed modernism in literature, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce. Maybe Katherina Hacker tried to do something similar? We all agreed that she didn't have the skill of those writers. We shared personal experiences about 9/11, living in Berlin, Poland, in Ceausescu's Romania, and as a Jewish American in 70s Germany.
I was impressed how polite and inclusive the group was. No one cut each other off. We pointed to the weak portions of the book with kindness. I sat there thinking what if I was to discuss this book with my friends in Germany? Would we have trashed the book, used much stronger language? Would we have been so kind?
After the official end of the book club, most stayed and continued the conversation over wine and pâté crackers. A diverse group of people had been brought together by their love for European literature. I was glad I had been part of it. This had been an extremely enjoyable evening. “When is the next meeting?” I asked before walking out the door. “Count me in.”

The Offensive Headscarf

I am walking down a tree lined Berlin street on a hot August day with my friend Hannelore. A couple is coming toward us. The man is dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, his wife is wearing a headscarf and a black long sleeve dress over her pants. “Don’t you just hate this,” Hannelore says.
“Hate what?” I answer.
“This backwardness, this oppression of women.”
While I ponder her comment, she launches an all out attack against Muslim male chauvinists. “These men, they keep their women locked up at home. They won’t let them leave the house alone. They don’t allow them to work outside the home.”
“Are you sure all Muslim men are that way?” I ask
She doesn’t hear me; she’s worked herself into a rage. I learn that she’s for the ban of headscarves for teachers and all public employees, that she is convinced that women are second class citizens in Muslim society, and that men have no right to impose their “misogynist” patriarchal values on women. “Even Turkey, a secular Islamic nation, bans the headscarf,” she fumes.
I can’t get a word in. “Why is this such an issue for her?” I think. “Why are so many progressive left wing Germans like Hannelore so intolerant?” In the New York subways, I’m exposed to commuters of different religions every day, some wearing chains bearing a crucifix and others the Star of David. Observant Jewish men wear yarmulkes while Orthodox Jewish women don wigs. I see Muslim women in headscarves and Sikhs in their turbans. If Berliners experienced this diversity every day, would Hannelore be more open-minded?
I think of a former colleague, a mathematician from Yemen, who dressed modestly and always covered her head. She didn’t appear oppressed to me. I think of the many Muslim students in my classes at City College. I think of Mawara who came to class in a Persian Gulf niqab, with only a slit for the eyes; none of her classmates found it strange or objectionable. I think of Ziram and her latest essay assignment. She wrote about her parents, liberal Egyptian Muslims, who allowed her all the freedom of an American teenager. Ziram danced, she flirted and dated. She came to her high school prom in a sexy slinky gown. Then she had a religious awakening. She prayed more, dressed modestly, and began wearing a headscarf. Her parents failed to understand. “I prefer to dress like this now,” she wrote. “It protects me from guys and their lewd stares.”
“Isn’t it possible that some women choose to wear headscarves, that they decide for themselves how they want to present themselves in public?” I ask.
“No way,” Hannelore replies.
Another fifteen minutes of heated debate follow. Hannelore paints a gruesome picture of honor killings that have taken place in Germany. She reminds me of the Taliban’s moral police. They don’t allow little girls to attend school. “Not every Muslim forces his wife to stay home or to wear a burqa when she has to leave the house,” I say. “Most want their daughters to become educated.”
She doesn’t hear me. I can’t help feeling that Hannelore’s stance reflects an anti-Islamic sentiment. Progressive Germans would never think of forbidding a Sikh to wear a turban or a Jew a yarmulke. Maybe Hannelore’s attack on the backwardness of Islam is a sign of her own prejudice and intolerance. I recall an interview with Hayrünissa Gül, the wife of Turkey’s president, reported in the news. A journalist questioned her about her fight for the right of Turkish female students to wear headscarves at universities if they so choose. “Isn’t that going backwards?” he had asked, to which she replied:
“The headscarf covers my head, not my brain.”
Copyright © 2009 by Anna Steegmann

Politically Correct Language?

Having returned from a two months stay in Europe, I recall warring letters to editors and heated debates in the Austrian press. An advertisement campaign by an ice cream company caused a ruckus. “I will mohr! “ (I want moor) the posters said referring to the desert “Mohr im Hemd" (moor in a shirt). Similar to the English Christmas pudding, this mix of chocolate, sugar, egg yolks, almonds, and red wine is cooked in hot water, and then covered with hot chocolate sauce. Cream (the shirt) is squeezed through a pastry bag around the Guglhupf-shaped desert (the moor). How could such a delicious innocent desert cause such a controversy?
The name for this desert, beloved by generations of Austrians, insults members of the Austrian black community. They perceive Mohr as a colonial racist term alluding to African nudity. Blacks in Austria have been fighting for more than a decade to eliminate discriminatory names of foods, streets, and other things. They have succeeded with the Negerbrot(Negro bread), a chocolate with peanuts. Very few Viennese pastry shops still sell it under its original name. They want the street names for Kleine und Grosse Mohrenstrasse (Little and Big Moor Streets) changed. One reader commented in his letter to Der Standard; why not rename the streets Cassius Clay and Barack Obama Street? Another reader suggested the Zigeunerschnitzel be renamed Sinti-und Romaschnitzel.
In Germany the pastry Negerkuss (Negro kiss) was replaced by Schokokuss ten years ago. The classic children’s book Zehn kleine Negerlein (Ten Little Negroes) now comes in a second, politically correct version Zehn kleine Kinderlein (Ten Little Children) although it does not sell as well as the original.
This discussion about inoffensive language took place in the US much earlier. Negroes are now African-Americans, while mongoloid children are children with Downs Syndrome. While this may satisfy some groups, I doubt that it eliminates real discrimination. Do we need to change our existing terminology?
In James Baldwin’s novels, African-Americans are called Negroes or colored people because that was the common name at the time. Shakespeare gave us “The Moor in Venice” and no one takes offence. What do we gain when we rename Negerbier black beer? Often language, literary style suffers. The original terms in the language hold more meaning. Rape is stronger than sexual assault. Negerbier makes a certain time and place come alive. Modern politically correct language is often lifeless and cumbersome. See the German StudentInnen to include females in the plural version of students. In the old usage, ninety-nine female students (Studentinnen) and one male student would have become Studenten (students); in the new, StudentInnen with the capital I in the middle, ninety-nine male students and one female all become female students.
Have we gained anything or is it a mere quibble? Why can’t a beloved desert keep its name? Maybe we should inject a little more humor into the debate and not take ourselves so seriously. The German band Tote Hosen is on to something when they said: Auch lesbische schwarze Behinderte koennen aetzzend sein. “Even disabled black Lesbians can be a pain.”

Continental Divide

For the third time, I have exchanged the air-conditioned, often windowless classrooms of City College for those of the Palazzo Zenobio in Venice. This somewhat derelict but enchanting building dating back to the 16th Century was once an Armenian
college. My students in New York are 18 to 25 year old children of immigrants. They live in the Bronx, Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens. My students in Venice, aged 13 to 75, were mostly natives of their countries and came from Melbourne, Oxford, Hong Kong, Vienna, Cologne and Zurich. They were accomplished professionals, teachers, lawyers, historians, economists and journalists. Both groups shared a passion for writing.

In New York, I teach writing in English; the past two years in Venice, I taught in German. An article in the Guardian about the Summer Academy Venice produced a spike in English speaking students and I found myself in the predicament having to teach creative writing in two languages.

I was worried. The Austrians, Swiss and Germans might be able to follow instruction in English, but they ‘d certainly write in their mother tongue. Would their English be good enough to understand the texts of the English speakers? It takes years to grasp the nuances, Zwischentöne, of a foreign language. Would the English speakers—unable to understand and comment on the German texts—be bored while listening to the Germans read?

I do not recommend a bilingual writing class to anyone unless they are fluent in both languages. Miraculously, the class worked. Most participants produced twenty pages of new material and one short text nearly ready for submission. Unable to understand the language, they listened to the musicality and rhythm of the words. English words found their way into German poems. A 75 year old Jewish man, forced to leave his native Holland in his youth, recalled his German. His wife, a native of Chile, who had lived in England for the past 50 years, suddenly began to write in Spanish again. The English speakers recalled the German words that had found their way into the English language: Zeitgeist, Schadenfreude, Wanderlust. Both groups living in Venice, immersed in the Italian language and culture, allowed Italian words to lighten up their stories. A Swiss-Iranian woman who attended kindergarten in the Italian speaking canton, produced a delightful story about her early childhood beautifully punctuated with Italian words.

As improbable as it may seem to teach writing in a multilingual setting, the results were stunning.