Exoti

Exotics Among Us: The Courage to Be Different

What is it like to be different from others in a world where conformity is the key to success? To be the only single mother in town, to speak a different language at home than at school, to love a person of the same sex, to go to church when everyone else is just sitting in front of the television? These short stories, based on the real-life accounts of witnesses for the Memory of the Nation project, tell the stories of people who were different. Whether by their origin – like the Sudeten Germans who were not expelled, Roma, or Holocaust survivors – their appearance, their faith, their sexual orientation, their disability, or simply by their courage to step out of the crowd and do something differently. Even though they didn't feel like heroes, they showed bravery every day just by remaining true to themselves, in full view of a grey society that had only derogatory names for them: subversives, God-botherers, Krauts, gypsies, perverts, cripples, the weird ones. Simply exotics...