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Afrika and Alemania
German-Speaking Women, Africa, and the African Diaspora
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Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2025
About this book
Afrika and Alemania explores the representation of Blackness in German-speaking literary, autobiographical, and cinematic texts across two centuries. By examining how different groups of women with access to German culture have depicted Africa, Africans, and the African diaspora, the book challenges the assumption that all women will tell the same story. Focusing on Black women, non-Black women of colour, and white women, it investigates how these diverse voices engage with and represent Blackness within a society shaped by racial hierarchies.
Part I analyses how Black, German-speaking women actively reshape and redefine Blackness in response to stereotypes upheld by white German society. Part II explores how non-Black women of colour navigate the complexities of othering while sometimes reproducing anti-Black stereotypes, while Part III discusses how white women’s projections of fantasies about Africa often erase Black voices and render them invisible. Offering a nuanced analysis of the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, and nationality, Afrika and Alemania provides a vital framework for understanding Blackness within contemporary scholarship and its broader social and cultural implications.
Part I analyses how Black, German-speaking women actively reshape and redefine Blackness in response to stereotypes upheld by white German society. Part II explores how non-Black women of colour navigate the complexities of othering while sometimes reproducing anti-Black stereotypes, while Part III discusses how white women’s projections of fantasies about Africa often erase Black voices and render them invisible. Offering a nuanced analysis of the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, and nationality, Afrika and Alemania provides a vital framework for understanding Blackness within contemporary scholarship and its broader social and cultural implications.
Author / Editor information
Contributor: Priscilla Layne
Priscilla Layne is a professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Contributor: Michelle Stott James
Michelle James is an associate professor of German at Brigham Young University.
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Contributor: Lisabeth Hock
Lisabeth Hock is an associate professor of German at Wayne State University.
Topics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
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Contributors
vii -
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Introduction: Blackness, Germany, and Representation
1 - SECTION I The Black Diaspora and Self-Definition
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1 “They Are the Next Generation”: An Interview with Sarah Blaßkiewitz
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2 Between Autofiction and the Archive: On/Travelling Olivia Wenzel’s 1,000 Coils of Fear (2020): Touching Tale or World Refracts Nation
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3 Postcolonial Ghana and the Legacy of Colonial Oppression in Amma Darko’s Novels
57 - SECTION II Non-Black POC, Africa, and the African Diaspora
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4 “Eingangstor zum Afrika” (Gateway to Africa): The Reconfigurations of Emily Ruete
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5 The Survivor as “Implicated Subject”1 in Stefanie Zweig’s Autobiographical Africa Novels Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa) and Nirgendwo war Heimat. Mein Leben auf zwei Kontinenten (Nowhere Was Home: My Life on Two Continents)
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6 Making the Invisible Visible? Representations of Black Masculinity in Texts by Yoko Tawada
132 - SECTION III White Settler Colonialism and Its Legacies
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7 German Cultural Superiority and Racial Hierarchy in Gabriele Reuter’s Glück und Geld
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8 The Black Slave Martyr Re-imagined for Christian Missions in Colonial Africa: Maria Theresa Ledóchowska’s Zaïda (1889)
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9 Rethinking the Periphery: Blackness in Eugenie Marlitt’s Im Schillingshof (1879)
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10 White Feminism and the Colonial Gaze: Frieda von Bülow’s Diaries from German East Africa
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11 Single White Female: Independent Women and Colonial Knowledge Production in German Colonial Fiction
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12 Colonial Propaganda Fiction: Else Steup’s Backfisch<sup>1</sup> Novels from the 1930s
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13 Perspectives on Namibia by Contemporary White German-Speaking Women Authors
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Index
285
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
July 15, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9781487547769
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
296
eBook ISBN:
9781487547769
Keywords for this book
German-speaking women; Black German women; representation of Africa; African diaspora; racial identity in Germany; anti-Black stereotypes; whiteness studies; postcolonial studies; women of colour in Germany
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
