december 23rd - a book everyone needs to know about
Kanak Sprak by Feridun Zaimoglu
you’ve heard me yelling about this book all year already and you all survived! so, please, bear with me for just a little longer.
i know most of you won’t read this book, even if you wanted, because of the language barrier. i know the rest of you, who probably could read this book might not be interested. but i need you to at least know about this book and its importance.
i don’t really have anything new or fresh to say. this book was first published back in 1995, over 20 years ago, and since that time, a lot has been said and written about it, both good and bad.
it’s been said that the language of this book is dated. and it’s true. this book was written in 90′s Kanakendeutsh, a sociolect rooted deeply in various Turkish dialects as well as street German, which also varied depending on the region speakers lived in. both these building blocks have changed since the time this book was written and first published. of course they have, that’s the thing about language - it never stands still, it’s constantly evolving.
but even if the language used in the book doesn’t sound the way it does now, the rest doesn’t seem to have changed much. those under- and misrepresented people are still under- and misrepresented (though, perhaps a little less so). they are still just as angry, disappointed, sad, tired, cynical, disillusioned and yet, despite all that, hopefull. and this is the thing that i loved the most about this book - how real and raw the portrayal of those people is.
yes, you might argue that at some point we’re starting to hear about the same issues, same pains, same disappointments over and over again. that Zaimoglu shoud’ve selected his interviewees differently, so that each chapter tells something new. i beg to differ.
of course, i can’t tell what was going through the author’s mind, when he was writing this small, but incredibly powerful book, but i can guess. and i will guess. so buckle up, we’re going on a journey.
what strikes me the most in Zaimoglu’s writing - not only in this book, but in general - is his sensitivity and empathy. his characters always feel real, because they talk, walk and think like real people. Zaimoglu can write a first-person narration from the point of view of a little girl and you will feel like it’s an actual little girl speaking. and this is what you feel in Kanak Sprak, as well. Zaimoglu steps back, hides in the shadows. he gives people a platform and then leaves them on it, only whispering some prompts from time to time, making sure everything flows naturally.
of course, he had not written everything he’d heard word for word. of course he had skipped some parts, cut others, trimmed everything a little bit, polished the edges, so that they don’t cut too deeply. but for the most part, he’d stayed true to what those people had said. he might’ve changed the form, but he had not touched the content.
the content belongs to his interviewees - those misrepresented, disappointed people, who don’t want to be the ‘poor, but kind-hearted Turk, Ali’, the ‘good guy Ali’, who want to feel angry at the system without being seen as ‘ungrateful’ or ‘unassimilated’. and this is what makes this book different, what makes it so special. there is no attempt to censor those people’s opinions, cut out the parts that might not appeal to the potential non-Kanake reader, that might offend them perhaps. this is a book by, about and for the German Turks, if anyone else feels offended, so be it. here the ‘Kanaken’ are allowed to be spiteful, angry, tired and dissappointed. they don’t have to pretend anymore. they are talking to one of their own, not to one of the Allemanen, so they can take off the mask and be completely, unapologetically themselves.
there’s no censoring, no sugar-coating, no selectivity. and this brings us back to where we started - yes, certain points are repeated multiple times and you might argue that Zaimoglu should’ve picked his interviewees better. but should he, really? or was this exactly the point he was trying to make? perhaps letting some of the issues to come back over and over again was intentional. perhaps he could’ve chosen different stories, different rants but simply decided not to.
as i said before, this book was written by, about and for the ‘Kanaken’. its purpose was not to be grand or mass literature. its point was to reach out to all those people living inbetween, feeling like they don’t belong anywhere, being called slurs. its point was to tell those people that it’s okay to feel this way, that it’s okay to embrace those slurs and make an armour out of them. and that’s precisely what it did.
