Feminist & Gender Studies is proud to announce Dr. Heidi R. Lewis recently published In Audre’s Footsteps: Transnational Kitchen Table Talk, the 7th edition of Ingeborg Bachmann Prize-winner Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Witnessed Series (Edition Assemblage), an English-language book series featuring Black writers who have lived in Germany.
In Audre’s Footsteps, co-authored by Dana Maria Asbury with Jazlyn Tate Andrews (Feminist & Gender Studies ’17), 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 oppressive narratives and address the always advantageous but sometimes contentious contours of solidarity.
Additionally, In Audre’s Footsteps uniquely features 7 chapters transcribed from actual conversations; 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; features a chapter focused on current Generation Adefra leaders Katja Kinder (also a co-founder), Peggy Piesche, and Prof. Dr. Maisha Auma; and features a love letter to Katharina Oguntoye, a founding member of ADEFRA and dear friend of Audre’s, as the “Afterword.”