"En gåva vi ska vara glada för" : Identitetspolitiska lässtrategier i den svenska receptionen av YAHYA HASSAN

This essay focuses on the reception of Yahya Hassan’s debut YAHYA HASSAN in Swedish media, mainly daily newspapers. Following the work of Magnus Nilsson it analyzes the “reading strategy of the politics of identity” in “immigrant literature” and outlines structural racism in the literary scene. By bringing attention to the critics’ use of this reading strategy, it is possible to unveil the “ethnic filter” through which literature by Swedish authors with a “non-Swedish identity” is being read in contemporary Swedish literary criticism. The concept of “immigrant literature” is discussed as a discourse, rather than as an empirical category. This essay aims to show how the Swedish critics read YAHYA HASSAN through the ethnic filter as a work of “immigrant literature”. The Swedish critics read the collection of poems as a political statement, and had difficulties defining Hassans work as poetry. Rather, it was read as an autobiographical novel in a working class tradition. There had been a long discussion in Swedish literary criticism about the autofictional genre, including a moral debate about the line between fact and fiction in autobiographical works. However, this was left almost unmentioned and Hassans poems were read as true and authentic depictions, something that the author himself contributed to in various ways. The essay also outlines the debate in Swedish media where critics discussed the author’s responsibility as an immigrant, a debate where many critics articulated a fear that the experiences depicted in Hassan’s poems could further inspire an already growing racist movement