By Maryann Henck, Maria Moss, and Sab­ri­na Völz

When lê thi diem thúy (pro­nounced “twee”) vis­it­ed Leuphana Uni­ver­si­ty this past May, not only did our stu­dents have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to attend her read­ing and talk, the three of us also had the plea­sure of inter­view­ing her. lê thi diem thúy is the author of the high­ly acclaimed nov­el, The Gang­ster We Are All Look­ing For, but pri­mar­i­ly sees her­self as a poet. If you’re look­ing for some cre­ative inspi­ra­tion to start off the new year, take a peek at the interview.

ASB: When did you first decide to become a writer?

thúy: It was nev­er decid­ed that I would become a writer. What I want­ed, ever since I was a child and first learned to read, was to be with words. Read­ing was both a chal­lenge and a con­so­la­tion, sto­ries were worlds I could enter, and from a young age I under­stood that words some­how sum­moned worlds.  At first I only want­ed to be trans­port­ed as a read­er. Per­haps I became a writer when I real­ized that I, too, car­ried worlds with­in myself, and words were the key to unlock those worlds and release peo­ple, places, moments, ques­tions, desires.  Read more »

By Sassetta Harford

I wrote this piece for a sem­i­nar called “Revers­ing the Gaze.” The idea was to write about dif­fer­ence and the chal­leng­ing of stereo­types, so I tried to incor­po­rate as many gazes as possible.

The char­ac­ters were cho­sen for their ambi­gu­i­ty. After our dis­cus­sions in class, Injun Joe seemed to be the per­fect anti-hero instead of a com­mon vil­lain with a racial slur. Esper­an­za – with her iden­ti­ty strug­gle con­cern­ing eth­nic issues, gen­der iden­ti­ty, social sta­tus, and her hints at the decon­struc­tion of stereo­typ­i­cal gen­der roles – was a char­ac­ter that I felt I could iden­ti­fy with.

The notion of being nei­ther here nor there, being in-between cul­tur­al­ly, is some­thing that I can relate to while rec­og­niz­ing what a priv­i­leged posi­tion this can be when one is not sub­ject­ed to dis­crim­i­na­tion. The numer­ous bor­ders the char­ac­ters have had to face are rem­i­nis­cent of fences around reser­va­tions or the bru­tal­i­ty of the Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can bor­der. More specif­i­cal­ly, it is about what hap­pens years, maybe decades, lat­er when the ances­tors have long crossed the bor­der, but the indi­vid­ual is still con­front­ed with divid­ing lines and is forced to make deci­sions as well as cre­ate his/her own iden­ti­ty, which is always cul­tur­al and political.

Amer­i­cana

By Sas­set­ta Harford

I guess it’s kind of fun­ny, what with polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness and all. They just can’t seem to get it right when it comes to peo­ple like me. Half-breed, that’s what they used to call us, like a dirty mon­grel piss­ing on their white pick­et fence. Pre­cise­ly that makes me an Amer­i­can, more Amer­i­can even than George Bush or Wash­ing­ton him­self, and cer­tain­ly more Amer­i­can than their pre­cious Jesus.

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By Benedikt Fleischer

The Amer­i­can jazz queen, Melody Gar­dot, is still eager to explore the world around her, but her focus has changed and been nar­rowed down to her own coun­try. Her fourth album, Cur­ren­cy of Man, fea­tures social com­men­tary on Amer­i­can soci­ety – a com­men­tary wrapped in a bluesy ana­log sound with warm soul and gospel influ­ences and lots of horns, a com­men­tary that has nev­er seemed to have more cur­ren­cy than now.

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