Mobilizing Black Germany

A Black Perspectives Best Black History Book of 2020

"This foundational book gestures toward the importance of avenues that German scholarship has yet to explore." --German Studies Review
 
"Mobilizing Black Germany is a book not confined to any particular discipline, in terms of its relevance and usefulness. Scholars and educators in a variety of fields and at various levels of education will be glad to have Mobilizing Black Germany, as Florvil's research is highly interdisciplinary." --Middle Ground Journal
 
​"A thrilling work. . . .Mobilizing Black Germany shows us that the work of Black German activists and intellectuals created, nurtured, and sustained a movement in the 1980s that is still at the heart of Black activism in Germany today." --American Historical Review
 
​"Florvil's book is a model for an expansive history of feminism. . . . Mobilizing Black Germany shows that the work of Black German women cannot be ignored if historians want to trace changing understandings of gender and racial inequality in Germany and Europe." --GHIL Bulletin
​"Florvil's book is a powerful statement on how marginalized communities overcome victimization, write themselves into the text of a nation and make themselves visible on an international stage. . . . The book also mobilizes hope that through solidarity, national historical narratives can be challenged, reshaped, and indeed redefined by minoritized and marginalized communities." --Monatshefte
​"Indispensable." --German Quarterly
"Tiffany N. Florvil's book Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement . . . is the first book to address the growth of the Initiative of Black Germans (Initiative Schwarze Deutsche, ISD) and Afro-German Women (Afrodeutsche Frauen, ADEFRA) founded in 1985 and 1986, respectively . . . groundbreaking." --H-Net Reviews
"Offers tantalizing glimpses of what solidarities are possible today, what has caused them to break down, and how we can define freedom in a way that gives access to the most people." --Public Books

"At long last, the book we have been waiting for--not just for scholars of Afrodeutsch/Black German Studies, or even Afropean and Black European Studies: Florvil's magisterial Mobilizing Black Germany is a must-read for all scholars of the Black and African diasporas who are interested in the history of Black activism. Mobilizing Black Germany takes you to the very beginning of the Afrodeutsch movement, some years before Audre Lorde's arrival, and puts you right inside. Florvil's deep research crafts an unforgettable history rich with famous figures who stride the global stage and local heroes whose sacrifices and achievements were no less monumental."--Michelle M. Wright, author of Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology

"Tiffany N. Florvil does more than offer brilliant and original accounts of black feminist and queer activists and organizations in Germany from the 1980s through the 2000s. Her beautifully written and thoroughly engaging book provides a powerful and compelling analytical framework for expanding the geographic parameters of the African Diaspora and for centering gender, sexualities, and women to forging black internationalism."--Erik S. McDuffie, author of Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism
"Mobilizing Black Germany is thus a powerful work not only because it exposes how German society is shot through with racism, but also because it recognizes German culture as a site of Black literary and artistic expression." --Los Angeles Review of Books