Roya Soraya's Graphic Novel 'Wind im Kopftuch' Explores Iranian Identity

Roya Soraya, born in 1996 in Hannover, is a freelance illustrator and comic author based in Wuppertal. She studied at the Folkwang University of the Arts and debuted in 2022 with 'Faust' (Zwerchfell Verlag), a queer-feminist retelling of the German classic. Her autobiographical graphic novel 'Wind im Kopftuch' (Carlsen Verlag) follows a young woman traveling to Iran with her father to explore her family roots. Growing up in a German-Iranian family, Soraya felt both familiar and foreign to Persian culture. The journey becomes an intense experience between fascination and fear, beauty and oppression, without knowing it would be her last trip with her father. The 2022 protests after Jina Mahsa Amini's murder by Iran's morality police influenced her work. Soraya notes the protests confirmed her feelings of injustice and oppression, and the decision to speak out meant she could no longer travel to Iran for years. She recalls a demonstration in Berlin in fall 2022 with about 100,000 German-Iranians, which gave her a greater sense of belonging. Soraya embarks on a reading tour across Germany, including stops in Frankfurt (Mousonturm, May 7), Wuppertal (BOB-Campus, May 10; Loch, May 27), Cologne (Die Wohngemeinschaft, May 26), Koblenz (Studio Mo, May 30), Berlin (Pablo-Neruda-Bibliothek, June 25), and Leipzig (Moritzbastei, September 3).