zu lieben

"I had always wanted a family. At some point, I thought this wish would no longer come true. Then a phone call came and I knew there would be a new person in my life." Ulrike Draesner

The journey into the unknown begins with a flight to Sri Lanka, where a child is waiting for its future parents, a journey that tells of fears, misunderstandings and identities between continents, of hurdles, closeness, strangeness and tenderness. "zu lieben", the title of Ulrike Draesner's new book, is the "story of taking a child seriously. The story of a mother whose motherhood is always at risk. Our story," says Draesner. How does one become a family? What does parenthood mean in a society in which more and more children are growing up in unfamiliar family constellations? She will be talking to Elisabeth R. Hager, writer and sound artist, about the roles of women and mothers, motherhood of non-white children and care work. Hager is part of the collective "Writing with CARE/RAGE" and co-edited the collective novel "Wir kommen", for which 18 authors exchanged views on female desire, sex and age anonymously and through writing. Ulrike Draesner, a professor at the German Literature Institute Leipzig since 2018, is a regular stage guest at the Literaturhaus Stuttgart: she has been discussing classics of literary history with John von Düffel for years; in 2023, the Literaturhaus developed an exhibition entitled "Zur Sprache bringen - vom Missbrauch weiblicher Körper zu Zwecken des Krieges", based on Draesner's novel Die Verwandelten.