Full Description
In a little-known chapter of World War II, Black people living in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe were subjected to ostracization, forced sterilization, and incarceration in internment and concentration camps. In the absence of public commemoration, African diaspora writers and artists have preserved the stories of these forgotten victims of the Third Reich. Their works illuminate the relationship between creative expression and wartime survival and the role of art in the formation of collective memory.
This groundbreaking book explores a range of largely overlooked literary and artistic works that challenge the invisibility of Black wartime history. Emphasizing Black agency, Sarah Phillips Casteel examines both testimonial art by victims of the Nazi regime and creative works that imaginatively reconstruct the wartime period. Among these are the internment art of Caribbean painter Josef Nassy, the survivor memoir of Black German journalist Hans J. Massaquoi, the jazz fiction of African American novelist John A. Williams and Black Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan, and the photomontages of Scottish Ghanaian visual artist Maud Sulter. Bridging Black and Jewish studies, this book identifies the significance of African diaspora experiences and artistic expression for Holocaust history, memory, and representation.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Invisible and Invented Archives
Part I: Documenting the Past: The Artist as Witness
Introduction to Part I
1. Outside the Frame: Josef Nassy's Visual Diary of Internment in Nazi Germany
2. Broken Citizenship: Survivor Memoirs by Hans J. Massaquoi, Theodor Michael, and John William
Part II: Imagining the Past: The Artist as Historian
Introduction to Part II
3. Jazz Fiction and the Holocaust: Testimonial Objects in the Novels of John A. Williams and Esi Edugyan
4. Performing to Survive: "Queen of the Trumpet" Valaida Snow in Fiction, Drama, and Graphic Narrative
5. Postmemorial Landscapes of Black Europe: Maud Sulter's Alpine Photomontages
Coda: Dancing Out History in Oxana Chi's Durch Gärten Tanzen
Notes
Bibliography
Index
