book*ish: Rude Girl, by Birgit Weyhe

Welcome to book*ish, our reading group for contemporary German graphic novels! Practice your German through discussing each book's main themes and the artist's stylistic choices. All are invited, whether you just started learning or are already fluent in the German language.
 

Our third book club session features the graphic novel 'Rude Girl,' by Birgit Weyhe. 

The white German graphic novelist Birgit Weyhe teaches at a US college through an academic exchange programme. At a conference of American Germanists in the Midwest, she is accused of cultural expropriation. Is she exploiting her privileges as a white writer when she tells stories about Black people?

She meets Priscilla Layne, an African American professor of German studies with Caribbean roots. Growing up, Priscilla is labelled an ‘Oreo’: too white for her Black classmates, and too Black for the white kids. Rebelling against everything and everyone all at once, she joins the skinhead movement and becomes a 'rude girl,' discovering a community where she feels valued. Music, clothes, hair, food, class, race, gender, education – her life and identity are a complex composite.

But how should Birgit Weyhe tell a life story like Priscilla’s? What mistakes does she need to avoid? The act of storytelling itself becomes its own narrative layer in this unique graphic biography.
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Birgit Weyhe was born in Munich in 1969. She spent her childhood in East Africa and studied literature and history in Konstanz and Hamburg (MA). After graduating from art school (HAW), Birgit Weyhe has been working as a comic artist in Hamburg. Her graphic novels have been nominated for several prizes in Germany, France and Japan, and her album Madgermanes received the Bertholt Leibinger Stiftung Comic Book Prize in 2015 and in 2016 the Max-und-Moritz-Preis as best German-language comic. In 2022 she was awarded the Lessing Scholarship of the City of Hamburg.

PURCHASE OPTIONS

Please ensure you purchase the German version, as an English version is also available.
Dussmann - Das Kulturkaufhaus
AbeBooks

Or borrow a copy from us!
Several copies are available to borrow for free from the Goethe-Institut Chicago. If you are interested, please contact us at: Lukas.Deicke.extern@goethe.de or AliHaydar.Agrali.extern@goethe.de.

Upcoming book*ish Events
Wednesday, July 9, 2025, 6pm: 'Scheiblettenkind,' by Eva Müller