Yiddish Language and Literature Commons^™

“Das Muttermal” - “The Birthmark” - “דער מוטער־צײכן”, Kristin K. Mlay-Kuhns

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

“Das Muttermal / The Birthmark / דער מוטער־צײכן” is a trilingual work of transcreative poetry that stages translation as a method of mourning, cultural memory, and feminist inheritance. Composed first in German and then translated into English and Yiddish, the poem explores the catastrophic rupture of maternal loss and the slow transformation of trauma into understanding. The central metaphor of the birthmark—Muttermal, the “mother-mark”—figures the maternal body as both wound and connective tissue, binding ancestors and descendants through a physical trace that persists across generations, geographies, and languages. Formally, the project demonstrates how translation unveils the layered meanings embedded in …