Moffie: A brooding film about the violence of masculinity, homophobia and race in apartheid South Africa
In “Moffie”, we see that brutal norms of militaristic masculinities are part of how the film treats the theme of race and complicitness.
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Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjey-Brenyah: an ilb event
Last Friday evening I tuned in to livestream the ilb’s reading with Nana Kwame Adjey-Brenyah of Friday Black, a collection of short stories that explores issues of race and social justice in dystopian near-future settings.
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Streulicht
I have rarely read a book that looks at the topic of social background in such an impressive and intersectional way.
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What Rights does Nature have? with Sumana Roy
This year’s international literature festival Berlin has placed particular emphasis on alternative and sustainable economic forms. Poco.lit. visited an event presenting Sumana Roy’s contribution.
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The Vanishing Half
The story begins with the return of one half of a pair of twins to her small hometown in Louisiana. The Vignes girls, as identical in appearance as they are opposite in character, begin inseparable and end worlds apart. Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half tells the strange story of their lives, and those of their daughters.
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Die Sommer
“Die Sommer” (“The Summers”) is an important book about the world’s dividedness, about religious and political conflicts, about prejudice and identity.
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The Yellow House
Written in the style of a memoir, Broome’s book charts the complex histories of her own family as well as that of her hometown, New Orleans.
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Queer Afropolitanism in Germany: SchwarzRund
This essay is the last in a four-part series on Afropolitanism and literature. SchwarzRund’s intervention in the Afropolitan literary market thus stands out not only because of the setting and language of the novel, but also because of its evidently intersectional approach.
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Mask Off: Masculinity Redefined
As I read the book, I had the feeling that its main target audience is young boys who struggle with the expectations of having to be tough guys. Bola mentions that he wrote “Mask Off” precisely because he himself would have wished for just this book in his youth.
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M-Street Renaming Festival
On the 23rd of August 2020, on the occasion of the International Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, the seventh M-Street Renaming Festival took place on Hausvogteiplatz in Berlin. M-Street is set to be renamed to honour the philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo, Germany’s first Black university scholar.
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