Rauwerda, Antje: ‘Antje Rauwerda in Conversation’
Transnational Literature, Vol 13, Oct 2021
Access as PDF here
Want to give yourself the nervous sweats? Start talking about privilege, your own, or, for added anxiety, other peoples’.
At the January 2021 Follow the Sun conference, I was on a panel with Jessica Sanfilippo-Schulz and Anastasia Goana. Within the loose theme of “What is Third Culture?” we talked about identity construction and affiliation within increasing superdiversity (Anastasia), the implications of growing up cross-culturally (Jessica), and whether the construct “third culture kid” could provide a sense of belonging akin to nationality (Me, Antje).
I felt a bit sweaty under the arms after listening to the keynote, Aminatta Forna, say that “nationalism is an off-the-page identity,” and perhaps somewhat irrelevant in an era when for a writer “voice has risen above place.”
Antje M. Rauwerda is an Associate Professor of British and Postcolonial Literature at Goucher College in Maryland, US. She is the author of The Writer and the Overseas Childhood: The Third Culture Literature of Kingsolver, McEwan and Others plus other articles in the fields of third culture and postcolonial literature.