As one has come to expect of Emezi’s work, The Death of Vivek Oji successfully shakes up conservative constructions of gender. The writer illustrates the loneliness that can come with not conforming to social norms regarding gender and sexuality; the profound pain of not being able to be the person you are.
more...Recently, we’ve published articles on Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism. Both Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism can be framed as belonging to the larger genre of speculative fiction. But what is speculative fiction? Or perhaps more importantly, what can it do?
more...In her recently published essay volume World of Wonders, Aimee Nezhukumatathil frames moments in her life that have shaped her, with anecdotes about animals and plants. In this way, she conveys how wondrous and impressive flora and fauna can be, and how much they have to teach.
more...The Afrofuturist movement strives for a space for independence and self-determination for Black people and rejects European universalism. Yet writers on the African continent have also expressed how this label doesn’t speak to and for what they are doing…
more...Migrazioni/Migrations is a poetry and photography book created by Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka – the first African author to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. This anthology focuses on the reality of migration by exploring the routes that connect Italy and Africa, Nigeria specifically.
more...As part of our Green Library series, we spoke to Inger-Maria Mahlke about her novel Archipel, which was published by Rowohlt in 2018 and awarded the German Book Prize. Our conversation was about nature, class and colonialism.
more...The first woman opens up enriching perspectives on being a woman and friendships between women. For me it was a real reading pleasure: The book is definitely one of my Top 10 of the year 2020!
more...“Primarily, I want to create awareness: awareness for the perspective of a Black person in Germany, so that people who belong to the majority white population can develop a sensitivity.”
more...Aliens have landed off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria. Immediately, they change pollution levels, marine life, the quality of the ocean water – and that’s just before they get to land. Nnedi Okorafor’s novel Lagoon is both a fun, high-action romp through the old sci-fi tropes of alien arrival, and in many ways a carefully considered decolonisation of the genre and its Eurocentric epistemological underpinnings.
more...Afrofuturism is a future-oriented concept that centers Africa and/or Blackness. The Afro-German academic activist and curator Natasha A. Kelly explains in her recently published anthology that Afrofuturism 2.0 builds on the theoretical and artistic legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois.
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