Decolonial Spaces of Belonging in Chicana and Ukrainian-German Creative Nonfiction

Abstract

Decolonial Spaces of Belonging in Chicana and Ukrainian-German Creative Nonfiction Arne Romanowski The narratives that continue to shape the dominant perception of migrants and their descendants in today's world are very similar, and often clearly informed by colonial ways of thinking about identity, belonging, and consequentially about migrants as Others. Yet, migration stories across different spaces and generations also share other elements, such as the empowerment that stems from the experience of navigating multiple identities, perspectives, languages, and ways of living. This article focuses on how such narratives of empowerment and belonging are constructed and made visible. It connects recently published creative nonfiction from two spaces inside of the US and Europe, arguing that they work as decolonial responses within the "cracks and fissures" of Western civilization, to borrow Catherine Walsh's words. My analysis puts into conversation two works that were published in 2016, the first one in the US and the second one in Germany. Black Dove: Mamá, Mi'jo and Me is a collection of autobiographical essays by Chicana writer Ana Castillo, and Das Lächeln meines unsichtbaren Vaters [My Invisible Father's Smile, all translations mine] is a memoir by Ukrainian-German author Dimitrij Kapitelman. Both groups—Chicanos, or Americans of Mexican descent, and Ukrainian-Germans, along with other Germans of Central and East European descent—have historically sought inclusion and at the same time resisted hegemonic Western-Eurocentric narratives of belonging in the US and in Germany, respectively1. I acknowledge that when initially thinking about these two populations, what might come to mind may be how different they appear to be from one another. Yet— and this is what brought me to this project in the first place—one can observe considerable parallels between both groups' experiences. These include, for example, histories of territorial disputes, occupations, and shifting borders; encounters with modern/colonial discourses that negatively affect one's sense of belonging; the hegemony of dominant cultural practices over those deemed to be "other" or "inferior"; and the US and Germany's central economic positioning that, coupled with the practice of economic imperialism, has turned them into primary destinations for migrants.2 Finally, both countries' colonial endeavors—which are directly connected to and speak about the presence of modern/ colonial structures—are largely silenced in the stories both nations tell about themselves.3 [End Page 79] Within the literary realm, interesting parallels between the two sets of textual productions can also be observed. Over the past few decades, works by both Chicanx and Central/East European German writers have succeeded in carving out a more affirmative place in their respective US and German literary landscapes.4 Yet, I think it would be a stretch to claim that they are now part of the establishment, as they continue to exhibit traits of peripheralized literatures. For example, Latinx (this includes Chicanx) literature in the US is still generally "juxtaposed to canonical and popular Anglo texts […] and continually subordinated by white supremacist markets and logics" (Figueroa Vásquez 4), and I would add that the German case is similar, with the "centric" point of reference being German canonical and popular texts. In her study of literary history, for example, Pauwke Berkers finds that at least until 2006 ethnic minority writers were underrepresented in literary anthologies in Germany (426). A quick glance at a random selection of reading lists for earning degrees in German literature—by the German departments at the University of Koblenz and the University of Munich, for example—confirm the finding that authors of migrant background are underrepresented or not represented at all.5 Figueroa Vásquez confirms that "a sustained meditation of peripheralized literatures allows us to glimpse often-ignored sets of knowledges and experiences." (n.p.) In other words, it allows us to see the decolonial work that is being done in the cracks and fissures of mainstream thought and literary production and publication, which—to a considerable degree—continue to be shaped by modern/colonial ideas. However, notwithstanding the parallels briefly outlined above, it is rather uncommon to see Chicanx and Ukrainian-German experiences in dialogue, a void that this article is seeking to fill. In order to achieve this...