The Body as Geography: Özdamar and Veteranyi on Migration

“The body is the geography closest in” writes Adrienne Rich in her essay “Notes toward a Politics of Location” (212). In this paper, I explore the relationship between the intimate geography of the body and the vast geography of migration through an interdisciplinary literary analysis.

Informed by the work of Judith Butler, Vivian Sobchak, Gillian Rose, and others, my analysis examines links between body and migration in two recent German-language novels, Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Life is a Caravanserai (1992) and Aglaja Veteranyi’s Why the Child is Cooking in the Polenta (2001). Each narrative traces the childhood migration of a young female protagonist, through Turkey and Western Europe respectively. Gendered physicality is central to the language and metaphor of these texts, as each protagonist seeks to understand the constantly shifting geography through her body.

As they migrate, the protagonists’ bodies become spaces of negotiation between inner and outer geographies. I argue that – with their five senses – they create links between themselves and their surroundings, between familiarity and foreignness, and ultimately between migration and a sense of place.