Abstract

The Croatian-born author Dragica Rajčić is a solitary, innovative voice in Swiss German transnational literature. Her work chronicles experiences of emigration/immigration, postwar trauma, and exile, expertly navigating the breaks and ruptures such experiences impose on one’s life, love, and personal identity. Praised for its insightful irony, lyricism, and range of imaginative expression, Rajčić’s breakthrough style of poetic experimentation, epitomized by its “brocken” German, defies prescribed rules and conventions of standardized language. Bringing attention to that which is missing, her poetry speaks for those who have been silenced. Willingly assuming the position of oppositionist, outsider, or clown, as well as guest worker or guest writer, Rajčić aesthetically resists the social, political, and personal absurdities, contradictions, and injustices of her time. Her home, Rajčić maintains, is found in literature and the politics of caring, and it is thus neither defined nor threatened by traditionally drawn geographic, national, or linguistic borders.

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