Jeannette Oholi Launches Fall '24 Course on Black German Literature

When I went to school and decided to study German after graduation, there was always a lack of black writers in the curriculum. It was only by chance that I came across an anthology entitled "Farbe bekennen: Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte " ("Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out"), which was published by May Ayim, Katharina Oguntoye and Dagmar Schultz in 1986. Audre Lorde, who spent a lot of time in Berlin, encouraged Ayim and Oguntoye to work on this anthology, which includes essays, poems and reports by Black German women. The connection between Audre Lorde and the Black community in Germany is an example of how Black people of the diverse and global African diaspora share and support each other, choosing to use writing to tell their multi-layered stories.

In the Department of German Studies, I am offering the course "Black German Writing" for the first time this fall, which I will teach in German. It offers students an introduction to the rich Black German literature from the 1980s to the present, which comprises various texts (poems, short stories, novels) and transmedia forms of expression (spoken word, rap).

Black German writing deals with topics such as the African diaspora, colonialism, minoritarian positionalities in Germany, the reunification in 1989/90, everyday racism, activism, alliances, home, community, friendship and many more.

German 64.05: Black German Writing (2, Oholi) Dist: LIT; WCult: CI

The course invites us all to self-critical learning, reflection and conversations about power relations in society, academia and literary criticism. We examine aesthetics of Black German writing and trace how it contributes to social change in Germany and beyond.

- Jeannette Oholi