GRADA

KILOMBA

NEWBOOK

'The festival was wonderful. I was especially happy to meet fascinating writers like Nancy Huston, Amitav Ghosh and Nuruddin Farah and to discover new ones like Grada Kilomba. It was a great moment of communication and joy'

(Maryse Condé)

'An excellent book'

(Alaa Al Aswany)

Following its release at the 2008 International Literature Festival in Berlin, the critically acclaimed 'Plantation Memories' has been presented in some of th most significant events all over Europe and well received in other parts of the world, including South Africa, Tunisia, Brazil and the USA.

By the end of 2009 'Plantation Memories' was practically sold out. Its 2nd Edition coming out in April 2010.

"(...) Plantation Memories is a compilation of episodes of everyday racism. Linkingg postcolonial theory and lyrical narrative, the book provides a new and inspiring interpretation of everyday racism in the form of short stories. From the question "Where do you come from?" to the N-Word to Hair Politics, te book is essential to anyone interested in Black studies, postcolonialism, critical whiteness, gender studies and psychoanalysis."

(Unrast Verlag, September 2008)

"What a beautiful N.! Look how nice the N. looks" says a girl to Kathleen. Kathleen is shocked, for she didn't expect to be perceive as the inferior 'Other.' This moment of surprise and pain describes everyday racism as a mise-en-scéne where whites suddenly become symbolic masters and Blacks, through insult and humiliation, become figurative slaves. Unexpectedly, the past comes to coincide with the present and the present is experienced as if one were in that agonizing past, as the titel Plantation Memories announces.

BOOK REVISION:

Amy Evans

COVER DESIGN/PHOTOGRAPH:

Dawit Habtu

price: 16€

You can order this book at any bookstore or at:
www.amazon.de
www.unrast-verlag.de

Paperback: October 2008

ISBN 978-3-89771-485-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

I. THE MASK

II. WHO CAN SPEAK?

III. SPEAKING THE UNSPEAKABLE

Defining Racism

IV. GENDERED RACISM

"(...) would you like to clean our house?"

- Connecting 'Race' and Gender.

V. SPACE POLITICS

1. "Where do you come from?"

- Being Placed Outside the Nation.

2. "(...) but you cannot be German."

- Colonial Fantasies, Isolation and 'Race.'

3. "(...) they want to hear an exotic story."

- Voyeurism and the Joy of Otherness.

VI. HAIR POLITICS

4. "(...) people used to touch my hair!"

- Invading the Black Body.

5. "Excuse me, how do you wash your hair?"

- Fantasies of Dirtiness and Colonial Domestication.

6. "(...) me and my natural hair."

- Hair, Black Women and Political Consciousness.

7. "he smelled my hair and sang this song... about monkeys." - white Wild Fantasies, Love and the Black Venus.

VII. SEXUAL POLITICS

8. "Wer hat Angst vor dem Schwarzen Mann"

- The Oedipus Complex, Killing the Black Man and Seducing the Black Women.

9. "(...) as if we are going to take their men or their children." - Fantasies of the Black Whore vs. Black Mammy.

10. "I was (competition) for her because I was Black like her child." - Black Women, Black Children, white Mothers.

VIII. SKIN POLITICS

11. "Well, but for me you are not Black!"

- Racial Phobia and Recompense.

12. "my adoptive parents used the N-Word all the time. For me they used the word M." - Racism within the family.

13. "I didn't want to be seen as a N., like they were"

- Misrepresentation and Identification.

IX. THE N-WORD AND TRAUMA

14. "What a beautiful N. ..."

- The N-Word and Trauma

15."what beautiful skin... I want to be a N. too!

- Envy and Desire for the Black Subject.

16. "You get this ache in your fingers"

- The Unspeakable Pain of Racism.

17. "everybody is different (...) and that makes the worls great..." - The Theater of Racism and its Triangulation.

X. SEGREGATION AND RACIAL CONTAGION

18. "whites on one side, Blacks on the other"

- Racial Segregation and white Fantasies of Contagion

19. "The neighborhood where I was living was white"

- Crossing the Boundaries and Hostility.

XI. PERFORMING BLACKNESS

20. "If I were the only Black student in the class, I had to, in a sense, represent what that meant." - Performing Perfection, Representing the 'Race.'

21. "But where do your great-grandparents come from?"

- Coming to Germany.

22. "Foreigners have it better here than prisoners"

- Racist Confessions and Agression.

XII. SUICIDE

23. "my mother commited suicide (...) I think she was very lonely in our town" - Racism, Isolation and Suicide.

24. "The Great Mothers of the Black 'Race'

- The myth of Super Strong Black Woman and the Silent Suffering.

XIII. HEALING AND TRANSFORMATION

25. "These dolls, you see them if you go to plantation houses in the South" - Colonial Objects.

26. "I had to read a lot, to learn, to study (...) meet other Black People" - Decolonization and Disalienation.

27. "Black people greeted me on the street..."

- Piecing Together the Fragments of Colonialism.

28. (...) sistah, he said"

- The Imaginary African Family and Traumatic Reparation.

XIV. DECOLONIZING THE SELF

LITERATURE

GradaKilomba©