Raphaëlle Red is an author currently living in Berlin who writes in French, German and English. She is also doing her PhD on literature in the African diaspora. We had the pleasure of speaking with her about her French-language debut novel Adikou, its protagonist’s journey and its context from one language to the next. The German translation of the novel by Patricia Klobusiczky was published in September 2024 by Rowohlt Verlag.
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„Go Tell It on the Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else. I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal, above all, with my father. “, James Baldwin said of his autobiographical debut novel, published in 1953.
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In Rowohlt Verlag’s newly launched series, rororo Entdeckungen, Magda Birkmann and Nicole Seifert select novels by remarkable but forgotten female authors from the twentieth century for publication. Last week we had the pleasure of talking to Magda Birkmann about this series and the novel Daddy was a number runner (Eine Tochter Harlems) by Louise Meriwether.
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Betiel Berhe explores and explains how closely related the dimensions of race and class are, by way of her own biography and various events of recent years.
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Judith Coffey and Vivien Laumann critique that antisemitism and Jewish perspectives have thus far often been elided in intersectional debates. At the end of 2021, they published their book Gojnormativität (Goynormativity) to make Jewish positions more speakable and visible. We had the privilege of talking to Judith Coffey about the book.
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As the title of Natasha Brown’s debut novel suggests, it amounts to a coming-together, an assembling. A Black British woman attends a party for an upper-class white family. This celebration in rural England is the culmination of her inner dilemmas: has she made it or are her actions making her an accomplice to the racism she experiences? At this party, she makes up her mind.
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In 2019, Yasemin Altınay founded the Literarische Diverse publishing house. In this interview with poco.lit., she offers insights into her work, talks about her motivation and the challenges of the literary industry.
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Schwarzes Herz is the first novel by anti-racism activist Jasmina Kuhnke, and it reads like a diary entry by the protagonist. The first-person perspective, which allows readers to experience the fictional world of the protagonist from her perspective, is a particularly valuable one in the context of racism and domestic violence: it’s the voice of an affected person and readers have to listen.
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This month we share our favorite podcast episodes with you again. The selected episodes are about racism on different continents, racism in relation to the literary market and language, the current Black Lives Matter protests and diversity as a trend.
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Alana Lentin, maybe one of the most lucid race scholars around at the moment, demystifies central questions surrounding race and racism.
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