"Aber eigentlich war keines von den Wörtern ganz deutsch, sondern anders deutsch." Mehrsprachigkeit in transnationaler Literatur

This article analyzes the difference betweeen on the one hand the external ascription as "the other" German literature of texts that are not written in the authors' first languages and on the other hand the self-definition by the first-person narrator in Yoko Tawadas "Überseezungen": She herself calls the language she is dreaming in "not entirely German, but another German". Whereas the first assignation mostly debates on categories of integration or exclusion of those texts into/ off the canon of national philology, the literary example problematizes such clear und unambigously definable categories.Therefore, the article analyzes the literary play with concepts of mother vs. 'foreign' tongue as well with several plurilingual constructions of identity.