Afrika and Alemania

German-Speaking Women, Africa, and the African Diaspora

Priscilla Layne, Michelle Stott James, Lisabeth Hock (Autoren)

Buch | Softcover

296 Seiten

2025
University of Toronto Press (Verlag)
978-1-4875-6073-7 (ISBN)

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This book examines how German-speaking women of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds represent Africa and Blackness, foregrounding the challenges Black women face in defining and portraying Blackness, African identities, and Africa on their terms.

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.

Priscilla Layne is a professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Michelle James is an associate professor of German at Brigham Young University. Lisabeth Hock is an associate professor of German at Wayne State University.

Contributors

Introduction: Blackness, Germany, and Representation
Lisabeth Hock, Priscilla Layne, and Michelle James

Part I: The Black Diaspora and Self-Definition

1. “They Are the Next Generation”: An Interview with Sarah Blaßkiewitz
Priscilla Layne and Lisabeth Hock

2. Between Autofiction and the Archive: On/Travelling Olivia Wenzel’s 1,000 Coils of Fear (2020), Touching Tale or World Refracts Nation
Birgit Tautz

3. Postcolonial Ghana and the Legacy of Colonial Oppression in Amma Darko’s Novels
Priscilla Layne

Part II: Non-Black POC, Africa, and the African Diaspora

4. “Eingangstor zum Afrika” (Gateway to Africa): The Reconfigurations of Emily Ruete
Kate Roy

5. The Survivor as “Implicated Subject” 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)
Sarah Henneböhl

6. Making the Invisible Visible? Representations of Black Masculinity in Texts by Yoko Tawada
Lisabeth Hock

Part III: White Settler Colonialism and Its Legacies

7. German Cultural Superiority and Racial Hierarchy in Gabriele Reuter’s Glück und Geld
David Tingey

8. The Black Slave Martyr Reimagined for Christian Missions in Colonial Africa: Maria Theresa Ledóchowska’s Zaïda
Cindy Patey Brewer and Elizabeth Moye-Weaver

9. Rethinking the Periphery: Blackness in Eugenie Marlitt’s Im Schillingshof (1879)
Beth Mullner

10. White Feminism and the Colonial Gaze: Frieda von Bülow’s Diaries from German East Africa
Carola Daffner

11. Single White Female: Independent Women and Colonial Knowledge Production in German Colonial Fiction
Maureen Gallagher

12. Colonial Propaganda Fiction: Else Steup’s Backfisch Novels from the 1930s
Julia K. Gruber

13. Perspectives on Namibia by Contemporary White German-Speaking Women Authors
Lorely French

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	03.06.2025
Reihe/Serie	German and European Studies
Zusatzinfo	7 illustrations
Verlagsort	Toronto
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	440 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Anthologien
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	1-4875-6073-7 / 1487560737
ISBN-13	978-1-4875-6073-7 / 9781487560737
Zustand	Neuware