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: USA

“People are read differently depending on where they are”: A conversation with Raphaëlle Red on the principle of the road novel

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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How do you say Ballroom in German? (Part 2)

In her second essay, Sophie Yukiko continues her critical examination of the German Ballroom culture. She observes that it holds huge potential because from its earliest days, it has always been a space for discussion, criticism, adjustment and conversation.

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How do you say Ballroom in German? (Part 1)

German-American writer, performance artist and cultural curator Sophie Yukiko looks back on a decade of creating and experiencing Ballroom Culture in Germany. With a critical look on the reproduction of powerdynamics, she tries to find out what happened between 1980’s Harlem and today while diving into the conflicts and potentials of the German scene.

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Diane Oliver
Neighbours and Other Stories

There is perhaps no other art form that makes time travel so vividly possible as literature. In Diane Oliver’s collection of short stories Neighbours and other stories, we are in the USA of the 1960s, a decade known for protest and political upheaval. The so-called racial segregation. which determines everyday life in the USA, especially in the southern […]

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Sunday Buttered Toast 

Last night around ten o’clock, Jess drank a mug of Horlicks with a Hershey’s Kiss dropped inside, scavenged from an expired bag she found in a cabinet.  It was white and fossilized by now, but with some vigorous stirring, she managed to melt it into a blob which she ate at the end with a vanilla cream wafer biscuit.

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Jennifer Neal
Notes on her Colour

Many scenes in this powerful novel about race, family dynamics, mental health, trauma and queerness are surprising, thrillingly lustful or abysmally ugly – they will likely burn themselves into the reader’s memory.

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Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Undrowned

Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs is one of the strangest books I have read recently – and I mean that in an extremely positive way. I admit I had to get into it first, but then this unusual way of talking about dolphins, whales, seals and co. in connection with Black experiences won me over.

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