His mother worked in a factory, in a pub and in the fields, while his father pursued his own plans, mostly loss-making ventures: Dinçer Güçyeter, 45, grew up as the son of Turkish guest workers in Nettetal in the Lower Rhine region. After school he completed an apprenticeship as a tool mechanic. In 2011, Dinçer Güçyeter founded the EILIF publishing house, worked as a forklift driver and published his poems, of which the volume “My Prince, I am the Ghetto” was awarded the Peter Huchel Prize in 2021. In autumn 2022 he published his first novel: “Our Germany Fairy Tale”, published by mikrotext Verlag. In it he tells the story of his family, about growing up between different cultures and his longing for freedom, using different forms of language. For this he received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. Dinçer Güçyeter still lives in Nettetal with his wife and two children.
Even as a child I was rather feminine and that meant I had to fight. At school, in sports class anyway and later in my training as a tool mechanic. I grew up in a Muslim family where the structures were masculine. But even though I consider myself feminine, I don’t judge men who appear masculine. They are influenced by their families. They are boys who start attending the mosque at the age of five. Who are pumped up by their mothers because it conforms to traditional expectations.
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