#123 mit Stella Gaitano - Perspectives on Sudan through literature

Stella Gaitano is a South Sudanese writer and human rights
activist. Her debut novel Edo's Souls (Eddos goldenes Lächeln,
2018), the first South Sudanese novel to receive a PEN Translates
Award, has recently been published in German translation at Kiwi
Verlag. Since 2022, she has been living in Germany, currently
seeking asylum. In this episode, we speak about literature,
identity, language and exile, trying to form bridges to the
question which part school plays in all that. The conversation
moves from school as a site of possible trauma and structural
inequality, where language policies in Sudan systematically
excluded South Sudanese students from higher education to Stella's
multilingual biography and her decision to write in Arabic. Central
to the episode is the gap between how Sudan is portrayed in Western
media and what Sudanese life and culture actually contain.
Literature, Stella argues, builds empathy and asks the questions
that news cycles never raise. Her novel follows characters
navigating gender, class, religion, and the north-south divide,
rooted in Sudan, but telling a story that is universally human.