Abstract Emine Sevgi Özdamar is a representative author of German-Turkishliterature, which has been growing in size and importance during the last decades.The present article assumes that authors who use norm-deviant language(diverging from established linguistic practices as well as from conventional andmodern literary forms of expression) are particularly capable of making innovativecontributions to contemporary German literature. In Özdamar’s narrativeworks uncertain linguistic attitudes and deficient or “odd” verbalizations canproduce aesthetically valuable estrangement effects –; a conception recallingBertolt Brecht’s literary theory, as well as Ernst Jandl’s experimentations withwhat he called “heruntergekommene Sprache” (degenerate language). Due,among other factors, to Özdamar’s decision to use predominantly autobiographicalmaterial for her narrations, her exophonic writing accompanies in someworks childlike-naive forms of perception, and diction that can produce similareffects in respect to linguistic norms and habits. We can observe numerousmetaphorical expressions that reveal a playful animistic attitude towards reality.A look at Özdamar’s three-volume autobiographical sequence suggests that theestranging/innovative quality of her literary work decreases with the her gradualintegration into the German linguistic and literary community. Viewed in thislight, the struggle for literaricity would consist of maintaining and renewing theessential “linguistic strangeness” (Marcel Proust) of her style. Such an attitude isdifferent from a globalized (or globalizing) type of literature, which intends toproduce universal linguistic and narrative schemata.