{"id":24229,"date":"2012-07-08T17:06:47","date_gmt":"2012-07-08T17:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24229"},"modified":"2015-11-08T15:06:43","modified_gmt":"2015-11-08T15:06:43","slug":"the-afro-german-project-of-asoka-esuruoso-and-philipp-khabo-kopsell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24229","title":{"rendered":"The Afro-German project of Asoka Esuruoso and Philipp Khabo K\u00f6psell"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Afro-German project of Asoka Esuruoso and Philipp Khabo K\u00f6psell<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

AfrokanLife<\/a>
\n2012-04-15<\/p>\n

Arriving in the future, Stories of Home and Exile will be an interdisciplinary approach to positioning. As a collection of poetry, short stories and academic essays on identity written by Black Writers who regard Germany as their home, and those who regard it as permanent or temporary exile, it will attempt to add a new layer to the debate and construction of Black Identity within the German context.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an oversimplification of the Negro. He is either pictured by conservatives as happy, picking his banjo, or by the so-called liberals as low, miserable, and crying. The Negro\u2019s life is neither of these. Rather, it is in-between and above and below these pictures.\u201d
\n\u2014Zora Neale Hurston 1944<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What she speaks of is identity in its flattest form. The identity that people once saw when they looked at a black face, flat, blank, static, like a snap shot frozen in time. There was no breath behind the lips, no thoughts behind the mind. We were caricatures of ourselves, like a child\u2019s drawing. It is a false image. Diversity and texture have been and continue to be at the core of Black identity. To be human is by definition to be complex. Yet the Oversimplified image persists, like a ghost that you just can\u2019t shake, or a photo you can\u2019t wipe free.<\/p>\n

To escape simplification, new layers needed to be applied. From the African American Slave narratives quest for human dignity, to Du Bois\u2019 The Souls of Black Folk<\/em><\/a>, Zora Neale Hurston\u2019s Their Eye\u2019s Were Watching God<\/em>, Franz Fanon\u2019s Black Skin White Masks<\/a><\/em>, Achebe\u2019s Things Fall Apart<\/em>, May Ayim\u2019s Showing Our Colors<\/em> and Blues in Black and White<\/a><\/em>, and countless, countless more every literary generation has added a new layer to the image of Black identity and experience…<\/p>\n

…However while anthologies of African American literature have been published since 1845, and African writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, Ama Ata Aidoo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (among others) have gained acclaim on the world stage, the writing and experiences of Black individuals within Germany has, even to this day, been largely ignored. Literary studies on Black Identity within the German context are still very few and far between, and the layers this Black German identity have added to the image of broader Black identity has often been overlooked.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026und wenn Du dazu noch schwarz bist\u201d (Edition Con) and \u201cShowing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out<\/a>\u201d (Orlanda) in 1984 and 1986 were really the first testimonies on the lives of the African Diaspora in Germany to gain notice within mainstream German society. For Black individuals living in Germany \u2013 for those living in isolation \u2013 these publications became undeniable proof of the validity of their personal experiences. These texts offered a foundation for numerous other publications and further literary expression. They gave a deeper background and a clearer focus that allowed further perspectives…<\/p>\n

…Parallel to the desire for societal acceptance a different question arose in the aftermath of this violence and rejection. Being a member of the African Diaspora, how does one definehome? For many people with African roots the concept of home and belonging can appear fragile. In the late 1990s, many Black authors negotiated this concept by depicting Africa as exile, utopia, or potentially a new\/old place of belonging.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not at home\/ still not at home\/ not my country\/ just my origin\/ one of my origins\u201d writes Olumide Popoola<\/a> in her poem Nigeria \u2013 partly resigning, partly equivocating the concept of home…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Afro-German project of Asoka Esuruoso and Philipp Khabo K\u00f6psell AfrokanLife 2012-04-15 Arriving in the future, Stories of Home and Exile will be an interdisciplinary approach to positioning. As a collection of poetry, short stories and academic essays on identity written by Black Writers who regard Germany as their home, and those who regard it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,28],"tags":[3228,11207,11206,2948,9807],"class_list":["post-24229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-europe","tag-afro-germans","tag-afrokanlife","tag-asoka-esuruoso","tag-germany","tag-philipp-khabo-kopsell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43812,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24229\/revisions\/43812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}