In the meantime, we are so used to screen communication and poor sound quality in everyday life that it takes a sigh of relief to finally experience real conversations on stage again. Even what in the program booklet of the International Literature Festival Berlin (ilb) looked like a celebration of "wokeness" and postcolonial thinking, accompanied by a nod of agreement, turned out to be polyphonic and differentiated in the live discussions. A lot can be said without the walls collapsing, and not everyone thinks the same thing. The controversial case of the translation of Amanda Gorman's poem “The Hills We Climb” into Dutch, when the white author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld withdrew from the translation contract under public pressure because she was not a “person of color”, is now regarded as a false backsliding. The realization:Arguments put personal feelings into perspective. And it would be fatal to sacrifice literary criteria just to avoid the shit storm.

Paul Ingendaay

Europe correspondent for the features section in Berlin.

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One evening in the series about misogyny and female empowerment with the title “Words of Love and Hate” will be remembered. Three authors, moderated by journalist Eliza Apperly, thought about what power, misogyny and female self-image are all about. The word “guilt” - of the men, for example - was not mentioned. Of course, when she was young, she served coffee, not her brothers, said Jagoda Marinić from her Croatian youth. Priya Basil, British with Indian roots and author of the book “In We and Now: Becoming a Feminist”, also knew how to report typical childhood humiliations, and suddenly the continent no longer played a role. The American Maaza Mengiste, whose novels deal with the world of her Ethiopian ancestors, added: “I was told early on thatmy voice is too loud, girls should speak more cautiously in public. "

Universality of degradation

It was an exchange of experiences on stage, not a therapy session.

This was followed by considerations as to where the leverage could be applied.

But nobody really knows.

The universality of disparagement, regardless of geographical origin, and the return of patriarchal patterns have something particularly depressing when one thinks about them outside of catchphrases as what is to be expected.

Perhaps the only real means is actually to structure the common talk about it and make it the normal present-day noise.

For ten days in September, the Berlin International Literature Festival with authors from 47 countries is a unique opportunity for this social exchange. Even the change of location from the middle-class Charlottenburg to a cultural quarter in scruffy Wedding makes sense: the audience is on average ten to fifteen years younger and therefore open to the long list of names that are not yet so well known. One of the successful authors, Ottessa Moshfegh, also told the audience as if she had just started: She suffers when she doesn't write, she becomes unbearable. Creativity means hopelessness.