Abstract
The works by exophonic authors born in other countries, who reflect on their migration experience, constitute a vital component of the contemporary Swiss literature written in German. These include three female authors born in the former Czechoslovakia: Irena Brežná (1950), Katja Fusek (1968), and Ilma Rakusa (1946).
Their semi-autobiographical novels - Die undankbare Fremde (2012, The Unthankful Stranger), Novemberfäden (2002, November Fibres), and Mehr Meer (2009, More Sea), respectively - provide an important perspective on what it meant to "become woman" in Switzerland while having roots behind the Iron Curtain. Drawing on the theories of Bernhard Waldenfels, Joachim Renn, Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak or Yasemin Yildiz, I will show how the experience of foreignness in the context of adolescence and migration manifests in the texts through the motifs of identification, disenchantment, and entanglement.