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The House of Rust and Swahili Culture – Interview with Mombasa writer Khadija Abdalla Bajaber -engl
Khadija Bajaber had written a successful book last year, The House of Rust, which was recognized very well in african countries and abroad (see also the review of Lorna Likiza on this site). Raised and living in Mombasa, Kenya, she is strongly influenced with Swahili Culture and its long and rich history. This year, Khadija Bajaber is an invited guest at the African Book Festival in Berlin. I took the chance to talk to her before she left for Europe. And, yes, the answers are longer than in usual interviews. But its published here in full lenght version. For the first issue, only in english this time.
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An Uncomfortable Truth: Howard W. French: Born in Blackness – Afrika und die Entstehung der modernen Welt_deutsch_englisch
Africa and the Making of the Modern World, now published in German by Klett-Cotta, is to be seen as an important contribution in the reinterpretation of historical facts and contexts. The striking thing is not only the many facts that French presents. It becomes clear relatively early in the reading that it is above all the concealment or negation of facts and contexts that have made possible a revelation of one of the darkest chapters of Western history. A central thesis of the book is that Africa with its resources of gold and forced laborers, over twelve million slaves and the market for textiles, made an unheard-of rise of the European seafaring nations such as Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands,…
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Book Review: Töchter Haitis/Daughters of Haiti von/of Marie Vieux-Chauvet /1954 revisited
Töchter Haitis der haitanischen Autorin Marie Vieux-Chauvet ist beim Klassikerverlag Manesse in einer deutschen Erstausgabe mit umfangreichen Anmerkungen erschienen. Das Nachwort schrieb die bekannte Professorin und Essayistin Kaima L. Glover. Im Frühjahr 2023 wird ein weiteres Buch von Marie Vieux-Chauvet bei Manesse erscheinen. Von Hans Hofele FOR ENGLISH VERSION PLEASE SCROLL DOWN Die Töchter Haitis von Marie Vieux-Chauvet sind also eine Neuentdeckung. Mehr als 60 Jahre nach ihrer Veröffentlichung kann man es also auf Deutsch lesen. Ist es wert, dieses 1954 erschienene Buch neu zu entdecken? Eine Antwort liegt sicherlich in der wunderbaren Übersetzung von Nathalie Lemmens. Sie schafft den Spagat, den Charme der 50er Jahre Sprache mit dem aktuellen Farbton der heutigen Sprachwelt zu verschmelzen. Die Hürden des…
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Leïla Slimani: Schaut wie wir tanzen//Look, how we dance // Book Review
With her Morocco trilogy, Leïla Slimani sheds light on a chapter of French and Moroccan history that has still not been dealt with. It is not about black and white painting, because the history, the connections and developments of both countries and their people, are far too complex. Slimani's family comes from the upper middle class of the country. One can therefore speak of profiteers of the colonial era. And she makes no secret of it in her books. It is a global phenomenon of the colonial era that among the many victims and losers, there were also the people who took advantage of the occupation system. Morocco is no exception. The wonderful thing about this trilogy is that…
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Diversity in Germany: Raus aus den Schubladen! Florence Brokowski-Shekete Book Review ger/engl
„Raus aus den Schubladen! Meine Gespräche mit Schwarzen Deutschen“ von Florence Brokowski-Shekete ist das zweite Buch der Autorin, die mit dem autobiografischen Band „Mist, die versteht mich Ja!“ einen überraschenden Erfolg hatte. In ihrem neuen Buch portraitiert sie zwölf Schwarze Deutsche, die in meist gewöhnlichen Berufen arbeiten. Von Hans Hofele FOR THE ENGLISH VERSION PLEASE SCROLL DOWN Das mag auf den ersten Blick nicht sehr spannend sein, ist aber genau das Gegenteil davon. Es wäre natürlich einfacher, Musiker:innen, Sportler:innen, Schauspieler:innen nach ihrem aufregenden Leben zu fragen. Über sie wird in den Medien auch häufiger berichtet. Schon in der Einleitung macht Florence Brokowski-Shekete an einem Beispiel deutlich, was von Schwarzen Deutschen erwartet wird, wenn sie sich unter das von weißem…
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Could This Be Love? Essays about Interracial Relations – Interview with Editor Stefanie Hirsbrunner – ger/engl
Im ersten Teil der dreiteiligen Büchervorstellung zum Thema Diversity in Germany geht es um den Essayband Kann das denn Liebe sein. Could This Be Love? Der Band versammelt fünfzehn Essays von verschiedenen Autor:innen aus Deutschland und Afrikanischen Ländern. Allen ist eines gemeinsam: Es geht um die Probleme, Hürden und Chancen von Interracial Relations. Privat, berührend, unterhaltsam, erschütternd . Das Buch ist im August 2022 beim Verlag InterKontinental erschienen und auf dem African Book Festival in Berlin auf zwei Podien vorgestellt worden. Im Interview sprach ich mit der Herausgeberin Stefanie Hirsbrunner, die gleichzeitig auch Teil des InterKontinental Verlags und des African Book Festivals in Berlin ist. The first part of the three-part book presentation on the topic of diversity in…
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Fully Booked – The African Book Review by Venice Trommer- JJ Bola – The Selfless Act of Breathing – engl/ger
Fully Booked! New at cultureafrica.net: The regular African Book Reviews by Venice Trommer in cooperation with the InterKontinental Bookshop in Berlin and the AfricanBookFestival Berlin. This month: JJ Bola - The Selfless Act of Breathing. Fully Booked! Neu bei cultureafrica.net: die regelmäßigen Buchrezensionen von Venice Trommer in Zusammenarbeit mit der InterKontinental Buchhandlung in Berlin und dem AfricanBookFestival Berlin. Diesen Monat : JJ Bola - The Selfless Act of Breathing/Weiter Atmen.
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A phantastic Mombasa journey: The House of Rust – Book Review by Lorna Likiza – engl/ger
A phantastic Mombasa journey: "The House of Rust is an enchanting novel about a Hadhrami girl in Mombasa. When her fisherman father goes missing, Aisha takes to the sea on a magical boat made of a skeleton to rescue him. She is guided by a talking scholar’s cat (and soon crows, goats, and other animals all have their say, too). On this journey Aisha meets three terrifying sea monsters." (Graywolf Press) Khadija Abdallah Bajaber's, THE HOUSE OF RUST, is proof of that the fantasy genre has a future in Kenyan literature.
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Barefoot in Germany – Interview with/mit Rwandan/German author Tete Loeper engl/ger
At the end of 2020, cultureafrica reported on the book Barefoot in Germany, which was published in English. It is written by the Rwandan-German author Tete Loeper. Tete Loeper herself grew up in Rwanda in the 1990s, spending time in Burundi and Congo during the genocide. In Rwanda, she worked in projects with girls at risk and also gathered information there for her later book. Barefoot in Germany is about the (fictional) life of the young Mutoni from Rwanda. Her dramatic life, which begins in the red-light district of Hamburg, soon turns to the southern German province of a small town. There she is met not only by helpfulness but also by a world of prejudice, complacency and ignorance.…
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Not only on Woman’s Day – African Must Read Literature by Shonatiger
IWD 2022: African women writers you absolutely must read (and others on my reading list) To celebrate this year’s International Women’s Day, here’s a non-exhaustive list of some excellent African women writers, and the books that put them on my list. If you click on the name, you will be taken to the author’s Wikipedia page, where available. Where I wrote a review on my blog, I have added the link below. Petina Gappah I’m in awe of Ms Gappah’s writing, which in my opinion is always excellent, with her distinct authorial voice. My post on Out of Darkness, Shining Light. Molara Wood I loved this collection. My post on Indigo. Yvonne Vera Yvonne Vera is one…
