In Audre’s Footsteps: Transnational Kitchen Table Talk (edition assemblage, 2021), co-edited by me and Dana Maria Asbury with Jazlyn Tate Andrews, honors Black intellectual traditions set forth by Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Angela Y. Davis, and Audre Lorde, all who were influenced by their experiences in Berlin. Engaging Black and Transnational feminist frameworks, In Audre’s Footsteps amplifies the resistive and generative experiences of Black and women of color intellectuals in Berlin and the U.S., examining how they resist and revise oppressive narratives and how they address the always advantageous but sometimes contentious contours of solidarity. Additionally, In Audre’s Footsteps:
- is indebted to the relationships I built and words I co-imagined and created teaching my study abroad course “Hidden Spaces, Hidden Narratives: Intersectionality Studies in Berlin;”
- is the 7th edition of Ingeborg Bachmann Prize-winner Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Witnessed Series, an English-language book series featuring Black writers who have lived in Germany;
- features a “Foreword” co-authored by Jasmin Eding and Judy Gummich, co-founders of ADEFRA: Schwarze Frauen in Deutschland, the first grassroots activist organization for Black German women; Ria Cheatom, a dear friend of Audre Lorde’s, member of ADEFRA, and co-author of Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years, 1984 to 1992 along with Ika Hügel-Marshall and Dagmar Schultz; and Hügel-Marshall, also a dear friend of Audre’s, member of ADEFRA, and author of Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany, the first single-authored book by a Black person in Germany;
- is unique and particularly accessible for a wide range of audiences in that it features 7 chapters transcribed from actual conversations (recorded by our audiovisual engineer Mae Eskenazi in 2018) with Generation Adefra leaders Katja Kinder (also a co-founder), Peggy Piesche, and Prof. Dr. Maisha Auma; Iris Rajanayagam; Josephine Apraku; Dr. Rebecca Brückmann; Jamile da Silva e Silva e Silva and Melody Bettencourt; Mona El Omari; and Dr. Céline Barry;
- and features a love letter, co-written by me and Sharon, to Katharina Oguntoye, founding member of ADEFRA and dear friend of Audre’s, as the “Afterword.”
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Witnessed | The Co-Authors | #FemGeniusesinBerlin | The Dedication | The Acknowledgements | The Preface | The Foreword | The Introduction | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | The Afterword | Buy the Book | Events | Book Dr. Lewis | Feel the Love