ALEXANDRA STANIĆ

“You’ll always be a foreigner, no matter how good your German is.” Alex Stanić is 12 years old when she hears this sentence, spoken by a regular at the tavern her Bosnian parents run. A sentence that casts a long shadow: right-wing ideas and values have migrated from taverns and living rooms to the 8 o’clock news, the arts and culture sections, and government agendas.

Foreign brat, welfare leech, cultural polluter, Švabica, man-hater, militant lesbian—in her first nonfiction book, each of these labels serves as a narrative starting point for Stanić to shed light on issues of class, misogyny, and right-wing populism. In a moving way, she highlights the challenges faced by people who are marginalized on multiple fronts and the bridges that need to be built to overcome them.

Stanić is gentle, but she argues strategically, because: without conflict, there is no change. She writes with radical honesty about her own experiences, without slipping into a victim role, but with an unwavering eye for structural violence.

Alexandra Stanić is a journalist and expert in feminist and digital discourses. On social media, as well as in lectures and panel discussions, she speaks about social justice, sexuality, and online hate. Alexandra Stanić was chief reporter at the Viennese city magazine BIBER and at VICE Austria. She lives in Vienna.

IN GERMAN