Feminism and literature – “hand on the hob”

At the end of their studies at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig, they published novels: Ms. Schätät “The Black on the hands of my father”, Ms. Unterlehberg “when we smile” and Ms. Pauty “family body”. Growing up in a misogynic system plays a role in all three books. Ms. Schätäte is right on the first page: »WIt is different than if men drink. ”With Ms. Unterlehberg, the protagonists fight against everyday sexism and with Ms. Pauty against transgenerational trauma and medical gas lighting, the phenomenon if disease symptoms are not taken seriously. Do your books also have a political task with it?

Lena Schäte: I thought about the topic for a lot. But I didn’t really know how to write about it without being accused or you open perpetrator-victim categories. There are more and more alcohol literature and more and more female-read voices talking about their own drinking. However, little literature also looks at the children and spouses. On their traumatizing experiences and what becomes later.

Mascha Unterlehberg: I didn’t sit down either and wanted to write a political novel. For me it was clear from the start that I wanted to tell a friend of young women, also because I haven’t read it myself often: ambivalent, profound friends, in which there are mutual injuries. I was also interested in the question to what extent friendship is strengthening in everyday life and which space she can take. But because they are women who, like me, grow up in the Ruhr area in the nineties, political issues have automatically been incorporated. Female socialization, permanent uncertainty, being objectified.

Michèle Yves Pauty: For me it started on a small scale. Certain illnesses and experiences occur frequently, especially among the female people read in the family body. Especially with my sister, in which more and more illnesses were added, it was an attempt to understand where it comes from. In the process that has run over three years, I also retired how systematically the Medical Gaslighting is.

What does it do with her protagonist to grow up in a ailing “family body” in a system that addresses her illness?

Pauty: We all grow up in systems and we are often not aware of what goes wrong. A painful waking up when you realize that there is a system behind that there are opportunities to change and see how little is done from the political side. If you look at it historically: Many people have long been fighting for the fact that Misogyne’s knowledge is changed in school books, for example, and nothing happens. Names and knowledge about it can be empowering, but it also makes angry. It is a difficult process. In my book, the protagonist dissolves, tries to keep her body healthy and to stay away from diseases.

In her book, Ms. Unterlehberg, the protagonists try to be there for each other in their growing up. What is the relationship between Jara and Anto?

Unterlehberg: They choose each other and to take a support in a world that they often find hostile and scary. They try to hide the outside world, but bit by bit they have to find that this is not possible. The question arises: How much can a relationship against misogyne structures exist and where do the two no longer manage to catch each other?

And the relationship also has something very destructive.

Unterlehberg: Absolutely. I think that is not atypical for young friendships. You have the feeling that this friendship will hold forever and the most important thing in life is. At the same time, you don’t know who you are or wants to be, and the potential to injure each other is very high. Added to this is the internalization of the Male Gaze, the want to fall, and no words for things for which you are ashamed.

Ambivalence in relationships is also important for you, Ms. Schätätät. What solutions did you find not to write classic perpetrator-victim roles?

Show: As a nurse in the addiction aid system, I worked with those affected and know that they are as complex and ambivalent as all other people. Sometimes you are drunk and destructive and sometimes you laugh together and just live everyday life. Everything is there at the same time. What was difficult when writing is that it sometimes felt like I put my hand on the hob and see how long I can withstand it. I tried that there is always a little hope. Writing texts means living with the characters in a world for months. Sometimes writing was like going in the basement. It was good to get back up.

For me, all of their books, despite the hard issues, had neither unbearable severity nor pathos.

Show: In any case. All three topics have the potential for social kitsch, but we have around it. We all write more reduced, I think. We describe instead of emotionalizing excessively. This could also be the influence of our studies at the Literature Institute.

Pauty: So we are children of our time, even in what we read. There are no new topics, so I also asked myself how to tell without repeating how to create a new look.

How do you mean that?

Pauty: I don’t know if I could have written the same book 20 years earlier, without author like Carmen Maria Machado, Maggie Nelson, Esther Kinsky. And even if I had written it, the question would be whether I would have found a publisher for it.

Unterlehberg: 20 years ago there were political discourses like the #Metoo debate in this form. After that it became more visible that, for example, sexism that I write about is structural. From this knowledge, I can name things more clearly today.

Despite the difficult circumstances, their characters discover their ability to act in the three novels. That seems to me to be a difficult ridge: the social circumstances without leaving the characters to their fate.

Unterlehberg: For me it was essential to write the characters to give the figures. They often feel powerless, so I gave them a lot of anger. You can argue about whether it is always justified. But it was also liberating to give them these two young women.

Show: With alcoholism, this is a narrative often: someone is addicted, then there is a turning point experience and at the latest the second attempt you are clean, drive into the sunset, look good and is well supplied with blood. There are these stories, but at work I have met the people who have addiction as a chronic illness throughout their lives. You always have to balance between clean phases and consumption, manage not to lose a job and family, not to slip out of the system, to maintain your body. I wanted to tell a figure that recognizes transgenerational trauma and fought against it.

Pauty: I thought a lot about writing who speaks about whom. Therefore, interview passages from my family members can be found in the novel. I not only wanted to write about my family, I also wanted to give them a voice in the novel. There is no apolitical letter or silence. According to readings, people came to me and told me that they didn’t even know that there was a term for Medical Gaslighting. Giving knowledge and understanding was important to me in the writing process.

Lena Schätät: The black on my father’s hands. Fischer-Verlag, 192 pages, born, 24 €.
Mascha Unterlehberg: When we smile. Dumont, 256 pages, born, 23 €.
Michèle Yves Pauty: Familieppasses. Hlyyon, 224 S., 23., 23.90 €.