‘Lebenslüge’, the myth that German racism began and ended with the Holocaust

The confrontation of Germany’s racist past was a beautiful ideal, but one that was never realised writes Jacinta Nandi Read More

Writers in Translation

by Sinthujan Varatharajah A few days ago, I was sitting with a friend, we were casually chatting when I suddenly remembered that her father is a writer – as is my mother. I remembered that we somehow knew each other through our parents who again knew each other through diasporic writers’ circles. We laughed about… Read More

“No, I meant where are you really from?” on being black and German

by Ella Achola “No, I meant where are you really from?” is a micro-aggression I am all too familiar with when my simple answer of “Berlin” is perceived as insufficient to a query that blatantly illustrates how my brown self is read as out of reach of possible German citizenship. It is usually asked with… Read More

Fathering While Black Part 2 – On a Path of Forgiveness

by Zun Lee Read Part 1 of Fathering While Black Father absence was a personal double-whammy for me: I grew up with a Korean father who was married to my mother, lived at home with us, provided materially but was emotionally distant, and extremely physically abusive. From a census perspective, he’d be considered “present”, yet… Read More