Diasporic Echoes im Avant-Garten
Reading: Lin Hierse "Wovon Wir Träumen" / Concert: Wassim Mukdad
Past dates
8/11/22
6:30 PM
At 18:30 (Reading in German) In her debut novel that was published by Piper Verlag in spring 2022, Lin Hierse tenderly tells the story of a mother-daughter relationship and of identity, closeness and emancipation. It begins in China with the funeral of the grandmother, to which both protagonists travelled from Germany and from which the daughter sets off in search of the traces of her German-Chinese family history. In short, not chronologically ordered anecdotes, Hierse describes the life stories of both, mother and daughter and of how the migration experiences of one have also influenced the other. The daughter's attempt to find herself between the cultures leads her back to her mother again and again, no matter how hard she tries to emancipate herself from her. Lin Hierse succeeds in sensitively narrating the balancing act of many children of immigrants: the feeling of carrying the unfulfilled hopes and dreams of their parents and yet leading an independent life. The author manages this ambivalence in the daughters sometimes warm-hearted sometimes subliminally annoyed descriptions of her mother and in the constant simultaneity of different places, times and emotions. Her autofictional novel is also a chapter of German-Chinese history that has hardly been told before, »subtle, courageous and with a fine feeling for language«.
Lin Hierse was born in Braunschweig in 1990, studied Asian studies and Human Geography and lives in Berlin. Since 2019 she has been an editor at taz, where her column poetical correctness is also published. »Wovon wir träumen« is her first novel.
At 20:30 The oud player (the Arabic fretless lute), who was born in Syria and lives in Berlin, is familiar with several genres such as tarab, dance and traditional music. In his music, he mixes elements of oriental and western musical culture and by now tours all over Europe.
A three-week series of events brings together diasporic voices at the Waldbühne with readings and concerts.
The war in Ukraine resulted in a wave of solidarity and an openness to welcome people fleeing from this war. Because we love this energy and want it for all those who have to leave their homeland, every Thursday to Saturday the Summer Festival, in cooperation with the ZEIT Foundation and NDR, presents authors and musicians and their stories about times of upheaval and displacement, of the search for belonging and empowerment, and of global political and family entanglements. Each evening begins with a reading, including a discussion with the authors and NDR journalists, and continues with acoustic concerts in a small setting (programmed by Anas Aboura und Alexei Volinchik).
