Yeni Yeşerenler

How do you become the person you want to be, indeed have to be? With "Yeni Yeşerenler", Duygu Ağal from Hamburg has written a coming-of-age story in which golden Birkenstocks and exhausting Alman therapists have just as much a place as the rejecting insignia of a world that doesn't seem to be made for you, but also lesbian love, a move from Hamburg to Berlin, women's football, violence, desperation, emancipation, self-confidence, friendship and so much more. It is impressive how Ağal tells so much in just a few pages in her debut. Ağal's language has a directness and harshness that catches you cold when you read it. Then again, "Yeni Yeşerenler" caresses you with a loving empathy that touches. And yes, this book is mostly about feelings, more than narration. Between the individual chapters, some longer, some only a few pages long, Ağal switches narrative perspectives with great naturalness - and this, in turn, brings the characters very close to you on the one hand and enables you to empathise, to experience all the characters in the narrative. The most important character, apart from Derin, who married Doğan, has children with him, but is actually still attracted to her childhood friend, is undoubtedly Derin's Anne. The mother seems to stand out above all others in this text. On the one hand, because she is Derin's great role model, her great love, on the other hand, because Derin's life plan and sexuality do not coincide with the values of her Anne. And so "Yeni Yeşerenler" is essentially a book about the inner struggle of a daughter who strives to break away from this larger-than-life figure in her life without losing her and her love. A struggle that determines Derin's thoughts and feelings and seems to be the motor for all the big decisions in her life - whether she wants to or not.