I’m Not Here to Save Your Soul:
A Conversation with Josephine Apraku

Dr. Heidi R. Lewis and Josephine Apraku

Histories are hidden all around us. If you look closely enough, you’ll find narratives buried in the details of buildings, parks, and even street signs we rarely pay attention. Through “The African Quarter in Wedding” walking tour, Josephine Apraku leads audiences on a journey that challenges them to examine how Germany’s colonial ties persist today. Here, she discusses how she started this tour, her research process, as well as what it was like walking around Berlin with Angela Y. Davis and Chandra Talpade Mohanty. She goes on to discuss how she anticipates motherhood will shift how she embodies ways of knowing and her activism. Here, we ask what does it mean to know something and what does it mean for others to value that knowledge or value you as someone capable of knowing? How do assumptions about who can be an expert bleed into our understanding of motherhood? How can we carve out enough space to determine what each aspect of our identities mean for ourselves?

There’s also the fact that I feel my perspective on racist discourse is getting more and more specific as I have different experiences in life. Even being pregnant is so interesting to me. For example, the kinds of fights I have with my partner now are really particular to what is happening in our lives currently. We’ll talk about masculinity, which we did before, but it’s in a different context. As anyone who isn’t a cis man, it’s easier to have a balanced relationship if you don’t have kids, because there’s so much more room to deal with stuff.
—Josephine Apraku

Josephine Apraku is a scholar of African Studies who has been working as a lecturer at both the Alice Salomon University and Humboldt University in Berlin since 2015. Additionally, they founded and currently manage the Berlin-based organization Kaleidoskop. They also write columns for Missy Magazine and Edition F.

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The Highlights | Witnessed | The Co-Authors | #FemGeniusesinBerlin | The Dedication | The Acknowledgements | The Preface | The Foreword | The Introduction | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | The Afterword | Buy the Book | Events | Book Dr. Lewis | Feel the Love