Marisa Bonacquisti

A Day in the Life of the #FemGeniusesinBerlin by Glorie Michelle Romero Elvir Enamorado and Marisa Diaz Bonacquisti

Glorie Michelle Romero Elvir Enamorado

This morning, I woke up with back pain and made the executive decision to take a sick day. When Nova returned from class, we went on a trip to explore the city. We boarded the transit and were on our way! As we were walking around, I started to notice all the children running around. I thought back to “Women In East Germany Today” by louise k. davidson and the dilemma many women have in regard to balancing the demands of career and family. While many women have experienced inaccessibility regarding birth control, East German women freely enjoyed available birth control, a year of paid maternity leave, and free babysitting when many other women throughout the world didn’t. When Nova and I were enjoying our croissant and coffee and observing parents walking by, she said, “Have you noticed all the fancy baby strollers people have here?” Given that the Berlin government has given approximately $500 stipends for baby clothes and baby carriages, it made sense. People had baby strollers that were attached to their bikes, held multiple children, and overall suited their specific needs. While the experiences of women here is not perfect, it has been interesting reflecting on the transnational feminist pieces we read in class and engaging with those theories in reference to Berlin. As davidson writes, while most westerners viewed East Germany as repressive (before the fall of the Berlin Wall), the reality is they enjoyed freedom about birth rights without worrying about its affordability or availability. While taking this course, I have found myself constantly reflecting on the reading material as I navigate around Berlin. Whether it’s conversations with classmates or interactions with Berliners, I have been truly immersed in my learning. I could not imagine a better way to experience Berlin!

Glorie Michelle Romero Elvir Enamorado was named after her matriarchal grandmother Gloria, and many family members call her Gloria or Flaca. She was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras and raised in Long Beach, California. She grew up with a Mexican stepfather, though, so she would consider herself culturally mixed. She’s the oldest immigrant daughter and a first-generation high school graduate. She got her passport just this year, and is now studying in Berlin—so needless to say, she is (and about to be!) a well-travelled girl!

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Marisa Diaz Bonacquisti

Dr. Zachary Wood, a Public Services professor at Seattle University, led our class on Friday. Professor Wood is also teaching a class in Berlin, so he and Dr. Lewis decided to switch classes for the day and then bring us all together. Professor Wood focuses on manifestations of power and critical community development, focusing on Berlin as a contested space due to the Berlin Wall and most recently due to gentrification. We discussed a multitude of topics in class that critically examined Berlin as an urban space. We discussed the power in the acknowledgment and reclamation of harm done through memorials, urban navigation, being an other by being a visitor, how we intersect with organic and non-organic spaces, and the urban experience as creation. These points of discussion are not specific to Berlin and can be applied to essentially all urban spaces, but we were able to contextualize them through Germany’s Turkish Workers Program, the political systems of East and West Germany, protesting culture, and the integration process after the Berlin Wall fell. Professor Wood emphasized the importance of the various forms of intersecting in urban space and how we step into somebody else’s way of existing when we visit a new space. He prioritizes navigating space as an other with humility and creating accessible spaces for the other. Through this class session, I developed a more informed understanding of Berlin’s cityscape during integration, especially in regard to the marginalization of Turkish workers and how Germany’s migrant partnership has had lasting effects on current-day policies. The reading material also helped me conceptualize Germany’s protesting culture and how it varies from the U.S. When paired with the three frameworks guiding our course (Black Feminism, Transnational Feminism, and Critical Race Theory), I was able to understand how cities are traversed by different demographics and the ways their experiences complicate an urban space.

Marisa Diaz Bonacquisti is a Chicana and Italian from Denver’s Northside with a passion for art as resistance. Her culture, community, and language have deeply informed her academic pursuits and aspirations, as well as her professional path. As such, Marisa is a rising junior double-majoring in Southwest Studies and Spanish (Hispanic Studies). She has a focus in public art and is especially excited about Berlin’s street art!

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The German Resistance Memorial by Marisa Diaz Bonacquisti and Talulah Geheim

Marisa Diaz Bonacquisti

The German Resistance Memorial Center is located at the historic “Bendler Block,” the unofficial name for the German Military Leadership Center. This memorial commemorates the attempted coup against the National Socialist regime that took place at this site on July 20, 1944. Along with the attempted coup, the memorial commemorates other resisters—both groups and individuals—across Germany. This space acts as a site of remembrance that showcases the various forms and motives of German resisters during the National Socialist era. In Germany, remembrance is an act of resistance against the oppressive ideologies of the Nazi regime. Public monuments like the German Resistance Memorial Center complicate master narratives about Germans during the World Wars in an accessible and educational way. The frameworks we have been working with (Black Feminism, Transnational Feminism, and Critical Race Theory) examine the dangers of simplifying atrocities and thus prioritize taking the most complex approach possible. The simplification of master narratives in storytelling often allows oppressors to absolve themselves of accountability, especially in regard to reparations. The memorial both complicates German experiences during the Holocaust and teaches visitors about allyship and the extent required to do so effectively. At the memorial, I was heavily guided by a notion mentioned during our Jewish History & Culture Walking Tour with Adam Schonfeld that morning: memorials reflect more about who made them than who they commemorate. As I paired this notion with my built understanding of counter-storytelling, the significance of the space became much more nuanced than simply being a sight for commemoration. Master narratives related to the Holocaust often exclude marginalized peoples within Germany, such as Black people and Sinti and Roma people; yet, this memorial challenges these ideas by conveying solidarity and allyship amongst women, children, and other marginalized groups facing oppression.

Marisa Diaz Bonacquisti is a Chicana and Italian from Denver’s Northside with a passion for art as resistance. Her culture, community, and language have deeply informed her academic pursuits and aspirations, as well as her professional path. As such, Marisa is a rising junior double-majoring in Southwest Studies and Spanish (Hispanic Studies). She has a focus in public art and is especially excited about Berlin’s street art!

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As a Race, Ethnicity, & Migration Studies major, I am somewhat familiar with the racialization of Jewish people and their contemporary relationship to whiteness in the U.S. However, because of my critique of whiteness, especially as a BIPoC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) student at a predominantly white college, the narrative of Jewish people being racialized was not the easiest for me to understand. As I walked through the German Resistance Memorial and Jewish History Tour, I realized the definitions I previously learned about racialization were not exactly applicable regarding the racialization Nazis imposed on Jews. For example, “Jew” was not just attached to phenotype; it was also attached to ancestry and religious practice. However, racialization as we understand it now was only a part that played into the narrative of what defined a “Jewish” person during the Holocaust. The American education system typically teaches about the survivors and victims of the Holocaust from a very white male perspective. After reading “Trouble Categories I Can’t Think Without: Reflections on Women in The Holocaust” by R. Ruth Linden, I began to think more about how I imagine victims of the Holocaust. The refugee stories of those who escaped persecution or those who survived through hiding in margin areas were rarely told besides that of Anne Frank. The stories of those who were persecuted for political identities, sexual identities, disabilities, and those who helped people survive are rarely told, as well. The fact that people besides Jewish people were persecuted was familiar to me, but not fully processed. I am pleased to know there is a space for untold stories. Reading the stories of survivors facing political execution gave me the perspective and knowledge I needed to reframe my perception of Holocaust survivors, victims, and resistors.

by Talulah Geheim

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Some Final Thoughts on the 2023 #FemGeniusesinBerlin by Dr. Heidi R. Lewis

“Gotta hit them muthafuckin’ angles! It’s a short life!”
—Drake, “Nice for What” (2018)

Judy at the DARK MATTER Museum with Me and Chase

I want to be honest. Every summer since around 2018, about halfway through this course (which I’ve taught annually since 2014 and except in 2020 and 2021 because of COVID-19), I contemplate not teaching it again. Most of the time, that has little to nothing to do with the students, who are usually great overall. The real issue is I’m getting older and changing in ways I never thought I would. Sometimes I think seriously about leaving the liberal arts or even about leaving the academy altogether. I don’t love teaching the same way I used to five years ago let alone twenty years ago when I taught my first college course while pursuing my Master’s degree. A large part of that is probably also due to my kids getting older. I now have an 18-year-old son headed to college this fall and a 17-year-old daughter headed into her senior year of high school. So, I’m interested in reinventing myself and spending more time with my elders and folks my own age. Plus, teaching in Berlin is exhausting. I still do everything the students do, including the walking tours and museum visits. Then, when my kids come along (as they did in 2016, 2017, and 2022, and my daughter also came this year), I’m energized by doing additional things with them like going swimming, shopping at flea markets, going to the zoo, and visiting extra museums. But that’s also exhausting.

But then, something(s) always happens to give me a spark, a second wind, if you will—another reminder of why I love teaching this course and why I’ll come back again.

Photo Credit: Katharin Luckey, 2023 #FemGeniusesinBerlin

This year, I remembered to visit a space where I once wondered if I could hold class for discussion days. The Regenbogenfabrik (or Rainbow Factory), just across the street from the flat where I’ve lived almost every year since 2018, is a self-governing, emancipatory, grassroots collective that began in 1981 (the year I was born) as part of the tenant’s rights movement in Kreuzberg. But to be honest again, my remembering the space wasn’t intentional. In fact, I hadn’t thought about it once this year—despite passing it multiple times daily—until I was preparing for our class swap and convergence class with Dr. Zachary Woods of Seattle University. I reserved rooms for us at two spaces that have been friends of the #FemGeniusesinBerlin for years, xart splitta and the FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum. One “fell through” for that morning, so I wrote the Regenbogenfabrik staff last minute asking if we could use their kino (theater). They said “yes,” and it was truly amazing. It reminds me so much of the now-defunct Brauni space that I was introduced to by Jewish Antifa in 2017 and where I held discussion days in 2018. I’m really looking forward to having class there and not only because I’d only have to leave my flat 15 minutes before class starts. So, that was one thing, and I’m starting with that, because sometimes it really is the “little” things that make a huge difference.

On that note, the majority of folks in Berlin were surprisingly kind this year. Never have so many strangers smiled at and offered to help me. It was unreal. My friend Sharon and I even met a guy from Detroit as we were leaving a coffee date. Shoutout to the Midwest. I wonder if some of the unusual kindness I’ve experienced is related to folks being happy to be back outside “after” COVID-19, but to be more honest, I don’t really care. As I told my student Kaléa during a walking tour, the older I get, the more I appreciate random acts of kindness. I need it. I receive it.

Ria and Me

Of course my friends, colleagues, and comrades here are always a reminder. I even met some new folks I’m excited to connect with again next year. To the former, I visited Ika Hügel-Marshall’s grave for the first time with Ria, Jasmin, Dagmar, and their friends Sabine and Katharin, who I met back in 2015. Every year, we go to the cemetery to see and tend to May’s grave, as well as Mike Reichel’s and Fidelis Grotke’s. This was the first time Ika wasn’t with us in the physical. I miss her. Most of all, I’m so thankful to have known and loved her and to have been loved by her. My daughter Chase and I were also so happy to spend time with Deborah, Katja, Ecki, Peggy, and Maisha in their garden. As usual, the food and drinks were delicious and the company was even better. I was thankful to hear Sharon and my other friend Josy read from their new books and seeing Tiffany at the former. I was thankful to have dinner with Rebecca, especially since she’s now a tenured professor in the U.S. and may not always be visiting Berlin when I’m in town. I want to spend every moment possible with my folks—sharing stories, smoking, eating, drinking, and laughing, especially my elders. Every hug, every kiss on the cheek, every toast is a reminder.

I do miss my best friend Dana, who came to Berlin with me as the Second Responsible Adult (SRA) five times between 2016 and 2019. It’s still hard for me to think about being in the city let alone actually being in it without her. To fill the void, my daughter, Judy, and I went to what felt like 100 flea markets and museums. I walked when it was possible to take public transportation way more than I was willing when Dana was with me. I also took pictures of the weirdest things like a donut on the bus and a bumblebee on a flower. She was definitely here in spirit.

Still, it was great having Judy back. Judy, a Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College alum (2020) and member of the Fall 2017 #FemGeniusesinBerlin, acted as the SRA last year and this one. The students and I always love hearing about her research on Indianthusiasm (or hobbyism) in Germany. Moreover, I remain honored that this course was one small catalyst for her work.

Italia and Marisa during the Street Art & Graffiti Walking Tour

Last, but never least, my spark was lit by this incredible group of students—these 19 students (highest enrollment for the course ever!) who were thoughtful, curious, funny, and super duper fly. It’s been a long time since I taught a course in which the Black students, Brown students, and other students of color were the majority and also gave so many damns about how they look. I firmly believe in the “look good, feel good” mantra, and these “kids” stayed camera-ready, and I loved to see it—hence, the Drake quote opening this essay. Oh, and for the record, can’t nobody serve poked lips in a picture like Marisa, honey. It was absolutely beautiful. I was so inspired. If I continue with my honesty theme, though, these were some of the slowest walkin’ students in the history of this course, probably in the history of all of mankind. Emma referred to them as “saunterers,” and I absolutely concur. But that was part of their swag, and it was only really annoying during walking tours—for me, that is. Haha. And their bond seemed so genuine. That’s not a prerequisite or a learning outcome for the course. However, it’s always a beautiful thing when I get to witness and support students developing substantial relationships. To be fair, several knew (or at least knew of) each other beforehand, but even those students seemed to grow closer during their time here.

The Street Art & Graffiti Walking Tour

And they’re so smart. I felt compelled to ask several if they’d thought about graduate school, because I see future professors in this group who’ll write critical scholarship that interrogates oppression and resistance with an especially necessary focus on intra-communal relationships. I see artists who’ll create critical spaces that center subjugated and oppressed people. I see K-12 teachers who’ll do the same. Whatever they become, I know the world is and will continue to be brighter with them in it. I feel sadness thinking about those slated to graduate next year, since I may not have them in class again. Still, and most importantly, I feel hope thinking about their futures. I also feel gratitude for being a small part of their journeys.

Chase and Judy before the SZA Concert

In closing, and as of this writing (June 21—save a few edits), I miss my husband and son more than words can say. I miss my house. I miss my bed. I miss our pets. I miss my friends. I miss my home office. I miss writing. I miss Black America. I miss Hip Hop. I’m ready to go home. But I will be back. And I’m already looking forward to it.

P.S. Other highlights include my daughter Chase’s budding friendship with Atquetzali; the SZA concert; my very novice attempt at storytelling during the German colonialism walking tour; my even more novice attempt at theorizing the bra we saw hanging on a wall during the graffiti and street art walking tour (#FreetheNipple); the convergence class with Zach; the new photojournal assignment; the students’ extra credit postcards; our first cracks at the Precarious Berlin walking tour I learned about from Adam, our Jewish history tour guide, and the Museum des Kapitalismus; and #FleaMarketFrenzy and #MuseumMayhem with Chase and Judy.

Click here to view a slideshow of pictures of the 2023 #FemGeniusesinBerlin, and follow on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook (@FemGeniuses and|or @AudresFootsteps on all platforms) to see more. To view final project indices and slideshows for previous #FemGeniusesinBerlin, click here. 

PhotoJournal Index:

“German Colonialism Walking Tour with Josephine Apraku” by Katharin Luckey and Ella Simons
“The Neues Museum” by Kaléa Daniels and Glorie Michelle Romero Elvir Enamorado
“A Day in the Life of the #FemGeniusesinBerlin” by Noor Issa and Nova Yu
“Jewish History Walking Tour with Adam Schonfeld” by Brailey Harris and Emma Fowkes
“The German Resistance Memorial” by Marisa Diaz Bonacquisti and Talulah Geheim
“A Day in the Life of the #FemGeniusesinBerlin” by Barbara Bilić and Gabby Rogan
“A Day in the Life of the #FemGeniusesinBerlin” by Atquetzali Quiroz and Ella Simons
“Die Mauer asisi Panorama” by Jordan Fields and Gabby Rogan
“Under the Berlin Wall with Berliner Unterwelten” by Elie Deshommes and Elliot Triplett
“A Day in the Life of the #FemGeniusesinBerlin” by Italia Alexandria Bella’-Victoria Rodriguez Quintana and Kate Nixon
“Graffiti and Street Art Walking Tour with Alternative Berlin” by Noor Issa and Cecelia Russell
“Urban Nation Art Museum” by Nova Yu and Barbara Bilić
“A Day in the Life of the #FemGeniusesinBerlin” by Glorie Michelle Romero Elvir Enamorado and Marisa Diaz Bonacquisti
“A Day in the Life of the #FemGeniusesinBerlin” by Brailey Harris and Elie Deshommes
“The Schwules* Museum” by Jordan Fields and Emma Fowkes
“Queer Berlin Walking Tour with Mal Pool” by Elliot Triplett and Cecelia Russell
“On the History of Poverty and Solidarity: The Precarious Berlin Walking Tour with Stefan Zollhauser” by Kaléa Daniels and Italia Alexandria Bella’-Victoria Rodriguez Quintana
“Museum des Kapitalismus” by Kate Nixon and Talulah Geheim
“Graffiti Workshop with Berlin Massive” by Atquetzali Quiroz and Katharin Luckey