Mariella Mehr's steinzeit: Narrating Trauma through Autofiction.
In her novel steinzeit (1981; stone age), Mariella Mehr exposes the cruelty that children of Yenish families in Switzerland experienced between 1926 and 1973 at the hands of Pro Juventute's Hilfswerk für Kinder der Landstraße, a charitable foundation purportedly dedicated to supporting the rights of...
| Published in: | Feminist German Studies Vol. 40; no. 2; pp. 1 - 30 |
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| Format: | Article |
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University of Nebraska Press
Fall/Winter2024
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=183743819&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 183743819 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 25785206 MC25 jtl: Feminist German Studies issn: 25785206 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Fall/Winter2024 vid: 40 iid: 2 pid: 758 pub: University of Nebraska Press artinfo: ui: 183743819 10.1353/fgs.2024.a954602 ppf: 1 ppct: 29 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.4MB tig: atl: Mariella Mehr's steinzeit: Narrating Trauma through Autofiction. aug: au: Gardner, Natasza su: Charitable foundations Autobiographical fiction Women authors Life writing Stone Age sug: subj: Charitable foundations Autobiographical fiction Women authors Life writing Stone Age ab: In her novel steinzeit (1981; stone age), Mariella Mehr exposes the cruelty that children of Yenish families in Switzerland experienced between 1926 and 1973 at the hands of Pro Juventute's Hilfswerk für Kinder der Landstraße, a charitable foundation purportedly dedicated to supporting the rights of children and youth. In the novel's protagonist, Mehr incorporates split identities, episodes of cyclical trauma, and alter egos to grapple with gendered and racialized experiences of trauma. I read steinzeit, a novel loosely inspired by Mehr's own experiences, as a work of autofiction, a genre within the broader category of life writing. Women writers have, for decades, turned to personal narratives and trauma literature as means to reconstruct selfhood. Reconstructing an autonomous selfhood through narrative ultimately proves impossible for Mehr's Yenish protagonist, however, given that the protagonist exists within a state system that continued marginalizing members of the Yenish community and failed to acknowledge Hilfswerk's damaging practices until 1986. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Feminist German Studies is the property of University of Nebraska Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Feminist German Studies holder: University of Nebraska Press dt: @attributes: year: 2024 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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