From awkward school encounters to offensive questions, our founder and editor Ella Achola often finds herself at the intersections of identity, and shared her big idea for bringing ourselves into the stories we tell at the last TEDxCoventGardenWomen conference at the Museum of London on 30 May 2015. About the speaker: Born in Berlin, Ella identifies as Afro-German, discovering a history she only recently stumbled upon. She writes and
By Ella Achola I have often imagined myself confronting former history teachers and asking them why Afro-German history, my history, never featured in their teaching. It is this understanding of my marginality within dominant narratives of German history that frames the argument of this essay (Kilomba, 2913: 36). Europe has a problem with ‘race’, the “construction of difference” that is “inseparably linked to hierarchical values” (Kilomba, 2013: 41).
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By Ella Achola “No, I meant where are you really from?” is a micro-aggression I am all too familiar with when my simple answer of “Berlin” is perceived as insufficient to a query that blatantly illustrates how my brown self is read as out of reach of possible German citizenship. It is usually asked with a slight sense of exasperation, perhaps a hint of irritation, at the fact that
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