The white German graphic novelist Birgit Weyhe teaches at a US college through an academic exchange program. At a conference of American Germanists in the Midwest, she is accused of cultural expropriation. Is she exploiting her privileges as a white writer when she tells stories about Black people? She meets Priscilla Layne, an African American professor of German studies with Caribbean roots. Growing up, Priscilla is labelled an Oreo: too white for her Black classmates, and too Black for the white kids. Rebelling against everything and everyone all at once, she joins the skinhead movement and becomes a rude girl, only to discover a community where she feels valued. Music, clothes, hair, food, class, race, gender, education - her life and identity are a complex composite. But how should Birgit Weyhe tell a life story like Priscillas? What mistakes does she need to avoid? The act of storytelling itself becomes its own narrative layer in this unique graphic biography.

“Birgit Weyhe develops a rhythm of empathy in her comic. She tells the story of Crystal and her immigrant family like a rap. Six pictures per page, that’s the beat.” Die Zeit “Full of violence, pain, suffering and rebellion and a long way from what you’d expect of an academic career.” taz “Alongside the stark visual force that Rude Girl develops, what marks it out is its montage construction: in a second narrative layer, Weyhe presents the US professor Priscilla Layne with sections of her own drawn biography. The result is a productive and extremely open dialogue between two cooperating narrators: on cultural appropriation, race and gender. An essential contribution to our current identity debates.” Jury statement, Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair