Ika Hügel-Marshall

Dagmar Schultz

Nivedita Prasad

Radikale Dichterin, sanfte Rebellin

May Ayim

Daheim unterwegs. Ein deutsches Leben.

Hugel-Marshall is the daughter of a Bavarian woman and an African- American soldier she didn't meet until many years later. Left at age 7 in an orphanage, where she was taken to have the "black demon" exorcised from her, Hugel-Marshall tells of her long struggle to come to terms with life as a German among people who seemed determined to disavow her existence. In her late 30s, she began to meet other Afro-Germans and explore her identity. A friend of the writer Audre Lord, she eventually published a number of works on anti-racist education. Her memoir is punctuated with snippets of poetry and illustrated with family snapshots. (The work has no index.) Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Growing Up Black in Germany

Invisible Woman

ein deutsches Leben

Daheim unterwegs

Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany, republished in a new annotated edition, recounts Ika Hügel-Marshall's experiences growing up as the daughter of a white German woman and an African-American man after World War II. As an «occupation baby», born in a small German town in 1947, Ika has a double stigma: Not only has she been born out of wedlock, but she is also Black. Although loved by her mother, Ika's experiences with German society's reaction to her skin color resonate with the insidiousness of racism, thus instilling in her a longing to meet her biological father. When she is seven, the state places her into a church-affiliated orphanage far away from where her mother, sister, and stepfather live. She is exposed to the scorn and cruelty of the nuns entrusted with her care. Despite the institutionalized racism, Ika overcomes these hurdles, and finally, when she is in her forties, she locates her father with the help of a good friend and discovers that she has a loving family in Chicago.

Ika Hügel-Marshall

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