Priscilla writes about the origins of the book: “While I was living in Berlin in fall of 2018 on a fellowship from the American Academy, I made the acquaintance of German graphic novelist Birgit Weyhe. I was working on an essay about the depiction of race in her books, and she invited me to Hamburg to interview her. We became friends and Birgit pitched the idea of working on an autobiographical comic about my experiences growing up in Chicago and then living in Germany. This idea was intriguing to us both, based on our conversations about cultural appropriation, race, and feminist practice. So we’ve been working on the book for nearly four years and it is finally finished.”
For a preview of the book, see https://europe.unc.edu/event/rudegirl/
PRISCILLA LAYNE
Associate Professor of German and Adjunct Associate Professor of African and Afro-American studies at UNC – Chapel Hill, Dr. Priscilla Layne’s (Ph.D. 2011, University of California, Berkeley) research and teaching draws on postcolonial studies, gender studies and critical race theory to address topics like representations of Blackness in literature and film, rebellion, and the concept of the Other in science fiction/fantasy. In addition to her work on representations of Blackness in German culture, she has also published essays on Turkish German culture, translation, punk and film.