User Profile

Afro-Germans continued to express disillusionment with German liberal activism. When Emde wrote, “I shit on your liberalism. I am a human being,” the sentiment resonated with other Afro-Germans, especially as they wanted less discriminatory treatment at home. Although the white German in the poem provided a sympathetic gaze toward the African continent, she overlooked the reality that many Black women suffered in Germany. Von Pirch chided white German women for admiring prominent social activists and musicians such as Winnie Mandela, Angela Davis, or Joan Armatrading while having a limited or superficial engagement with actual individuals of African descent in Germany. Those white German leftists often proclaimed their roles as specialists on Africa and African women, but they never realized that a “German Africa” (deutsches Afrika) also existed in the Federal Republic. Here, these leftists ignored the fact that Germany constituted a physical site for the Black diaspora.

— Mobilizing Black Germany by Tiffany N. Florvil

Afrekete included six issues in total, and each issue centered on a theme that underscored the significance of intersectional and international politics. Moreover, Afrekete was a motif that some African American and Afro-Caribbean authors used in their literary works. According to Henry Louis Gates Jr., Afrekete became a key symbol of the diaspora, serving “as a sign of the disrupted wholeness of an African system of meaning and belief.” Their ability to draw inspiration for the magazine’s name from Lorde also linked them to her and African indigenous spirituality. Lorde had long integrated African religious entities into her literature and invoked Afrekete in her works and signed some of her letters “in the hands of Afrekete.” She used Afrekete as a source of female strength, claiming that the traditional nature of women’s power in Africa could inform Black women’s consciousness and activism. Black German women’s reference to Afrekete connected them to a network of Black women. They integrated diverse Black diasporic styles, symbols, and histories and celebrated Black queerness in all its variety and depth. Inventing new traditions, Afrekete gave Afro-German feminists an opportunity to establish an intellectual community, develop their literary voices, publish their work, and influence Black German literature.

— Mobilizing Black Germany by Tiffany N. Florvil

"Just as Black German women, both straight and queer, co-founded ISD, they also rallied together to establish ADEFRA, a new women’s organization. Under the auspices of ADEFRA, these women created diasporic, feminist, and intellectual spaces and communities, while affirming their sexualities and identities. They imagined new political possibilities for themselves and the community and pursued spatial politics that centered gender, sexuality, and race. These Black German feminists were also indebted to Third World and/or Women of Color feminists (Audre Lorde, Gloria Joseph, and others) and the global sexual revolution of the late 1960s and the 1970s. Embracing intersectional politics, Black German women insisted on a space within white German feminist and queer discourses. They built on, responded to, and challenged mainstream white German feminists who still ignored the impact that overlapping systems of oppression had on Black women and Women of Color in the nation. As such, ADEFRA emerged as a Black queer feminist project that produced different modes of political action and gave Black feminism room to evolve and thrive in society."

— Mobilizing Black Germany by Tiffany N. Florvil