Lilia: Zilan, how did you come up with the idea of the children's book about Jina Amini, and what does this story mean to you personally?
Zilan: When Jina Amini was killed by the Iranian regime… At that time I was working at Hevrîn Xalef Healing Herb Garden, and we decided to plant a tree in the name of Jina Amini, here in Berlin. It was a mulberry tree from the region where she was born. It is used to make musical instruments. As Jina loved to dance and sing, to us, planting this tree was a symbolic act and a gesture of solidarity, celebrating both the region in Kurdistan where she was from and its local music tradition.
I have a son, and during the ceremony he asked me: “Who was she?” I found it very hard to explain to a kid what happened to Jina and the political issues behind it. From this point, I kept thinking about Jina and after a while decided that I want to make a book about Jina for the kids.
They have a right to be given political information, because they grew up in this society and we can not protect them by withholding knowledge from them.
Then I met Clara, an artist who worked with me on creating the visual part of the story. It took us two years to finish the story and illustrations. Then we met wonderful publishers: two hearts that were open to this project, to solidarity.
Claudia: For us, it was quite amazing because they approached us — Sofia Burchardi, my partner in Blue Boat Books, and me — with a finished book. We loved how brave it was. We always had the idea that our world is not divided into two separate parts: it's not a children's world and an adults’ world. Stories that move adults can be passed on to children because these are the most honest stories. That's how we shape our children and our communities.
Publishing this book here, for children who come from so many different places, is important. I don't believe that, let’s say, these stories are just for these parts of the world, and other stories are for different parts of it. Our world doesn't work like this anymore.
Lilia: Could you speak more about the book’s title and the importance of Jina's name?
Zilan: When I started writing this book, I was in contact with Mariela Nagle, my colleague from Spore Initiative. She asked me why exactly I'm writing this book, what affections move me. And the answer was: to be honest, I was very angry.
With the death of Jina Amini and a new wave of protests it fueled in Iran, the movement Jin Jiyan Azadi became well-known all over the world. And everyone here in Europe was shouting “Mahsa Amini”, which is not her real name.
It's a colonial mentality in action. It was happening in the feminist scene as well. A scene you expect more sensitivity and solidarity from in understanding the complex reality of non-white, oppressed women, especially from the Middle East region, which is still heavily affected by European policies — that was not acceptable for me, as it was not for many other Kurdish people.
In Kurdistan, when a child is born and parents give it a name, officials often write down a random Farsi name instead of the Kurdish one. That happened to Jina, too: the state regime forced her parents to give her a Farsi name. Farsi is the only official language in Iran, despite the multiplicity of languages spoken in the country.
I have talked with Jina’s father and mother, they haven’t used the name Mahsa even once, they always called their daughter Jina. In the book I write about it too, and that Jina was fighting for her Kurdish name. That's why we called the book JINA — The Girl Whose Name Means Life. Jina translates as “life” from Kurdish.
As a Kurdish, I grew up knowing about the Kurdish feminist movement that produced this principle — Jin Jiyan Azadi, or Woman Life Freedom — back in the 1990s. In Kurdish society there is a saying “There is no freedom without a woman”. It means that, if you want to assess if a certain society is free, you need to look at how free the women are. It will give you all the answers.
You wouldn’t dare to call Jina by her colonial name Mahsa if you did a little research, if you knew the real meaning of Jin Jiyan Azadi.
Lilia: We can often see how white feminism corrupts or distorts the message. What's the problem here, in your point of view?
Zilan: Before taking any action in solidarity with the oppressed, people should ask themselves: “Why am I doing this? Am I interested in what's happening with Kurdish people and feminist movements in the Middle East? Or is it colonial behavior? Do I just want to use the name of Jin Jyian Azadi for my own career?”
It actually contradicts the very idea of the Jin Jyian Azadi movement, because this movement is all about collectivity and collective liberation, mutual aid and support. If one could give an honest answer to these questions, such “mistakes” wouldn’t happen.
We are also very careful about the political message in our book, because there are a lot of groups who criticize the Iranian regime, but which combine it with racism against Muslims, with Islamophobia.
Our book is not about a girl who doesn't want to wear a headscarf, or hijab, which the Iranian government made compulsory for women in public spaces. It's not and never was about the headscarf or religion in general. It's about not giving freedom to young people, about controlling women’s bodies and expression. The core problem is the patriarchal, colonial government who is forcing people to live, to think, to believe in a certain way.
Across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, Kurds face systematic oppression of their language, culture, and way of life. In Iran, Kurdish is banned in schools, and Yazidi Kurds are forced to abandon their pre-Islamic faith. Those in remote mountain regions can sometimes resist state control more easily. As a Kurdish saying goes: “The Kurds have no friends but the mountains.” Sadly, it is true as only being distant from the police and government surveillance can help Kurdish people in Iran to live freely.
Claudia: Coming from a very eurocentric upbringing, I learned so much from this story. I don't think it's even been communicated that Jina wasn't just a woman from Iran, but a Kurdish woman. In this case Germany’s, and overall Western Europe’s stance towards the Kurds, for example, in Turkey, is super uncritical. They take everything that Erdogan has been communicating for the past 20 years against the Kurds at face value. The PKK, Kurdish freedom movement, is quite uncritically labeled as terrorism.
It's so true that this is why white feminism has to be criticized harshly. It doesn't look deep enough, beyond their own political indoctrination.
Lilia: Let's talk more about the educational part of the project. I see that it's not only a book, but it's also an invitation to make workshops to educate children as well as adults.
Claudia: For children, politics can be complicated, that's true, but politics are also made to be complicated. And maybe it's also good for adults to peel off the complications that we are being told.
What are we actually talking about here? Jina is not allowed to dance, she's not allowed to sing, or to wear colorful clothes. So we are turning to a child and saying: “What does freedom feel like to you?” Then suddenly, oh my God, they open up. And now it is not just a story, it's like Jina’s sitting next to them and they share what they like to do to feel free — laugh, ride a bike, eat their favourite food, dance and sing too…
That is how we can explain what children who are deprived of their freedom must have felt.
Or when we say: “Your mom and dad gave you your name, they chose it for you, but other people decided that you cannot use it” — they immediately react with anger, indignation, or confusion. They start asking questions, and we see that it is not that complex anymore.
The storyteller tells the story, but their story is taken in and interpreted by the listener. So every time you tell a story, it is slightly different because it depends on who's listening. Berfin, a Kurdish musician and a member of our team, sings a Kurdish song she wrote for us during the workshops. It leaves the children very touched. They feel the importance, they appreciate how much the culture means. We think that's a really good start for children to begin thinking about freedom, and how important it is not to take it for granted.
Zilan: And the Kurdish children here can recognise themselves in the Jina’s character. We see it very often that people who are writing about immigration and refugees are white outsiders, academics, or colonisers. Even Kurdish history is not written by Kurds. But it's very important, not only in Kurdistan but also here, that refugees and migrants could write about their experiences themselves.
For us it's also crucial to empower the kids and show that they are not alone. Jina said “no”, and they can also say “no” to those who try oppressing them.
This is why I actually wrote the book, because I said: no, I don't want a white feminist to do it. This is our story.
Lilia: Could you tell us more about the writing process?
Zilan: At first, I started to write in German. I am also a children's therapist, a behavioral therapist. So I knew I should be careful with choosing words and found it complicated. After the talk with Mariela Nagle, I asked myself again: “Why am I writing this book?...” I went deeper in my own intentions.
I asked myself why I was angry, why I felt the anguish. And I realised: Jina was killed because of the love she had for life. She loved to dance, and loved to sing. They killed the love.
And then I started to write again, so freely — and not in German, but in Kurdish. When I write in Kurdish I feel very free. Mostly I write poems, actually, but it is also important to say that as a kid I used to learn Turkish as a writing language, not Kurdish. In school I was taught in Turkish, and only much later I learned to write in Kurdish. For poetry, for writing, I feel like Kurdish is the language. Turkish feels very bureaucratic, much like the German language.
So when I started to write the book in Kurdish instead, it was just like having a dialogue with myself. And all the right words came to me. Then it was translated into German.
Claudia: We were working together with an editor, Leila Boukarim, who is originally from Lebanon and has a history of migration, too. She helped us translate the book into English. We are publishing Jina in two languages: German and English.
Zilan: I hope the Kurdish version will be published too.
As soon as there will be a published book with a story box, we would love to send it to Jina's family. It's very important that they could also hold the book in their hands.
They were very happy about what we were doing. I didn't know Jina personally, but when I talked to Jina's father, mother and brother, I said: I wrote a book about the dance and singing songs of freedom. They were like: “Exactly, she was like this, she was exactly like this.”
At this moment, I was very honored and touched. It is the most precious evaluation I could hope for.