Jasmina Kuhnke

WHITE LIVES MATTER

With her new novel, Jasmina Kuhnke holds up a mirror to white society in an alarming way and starts the debate about inclusion and equality more intelligently and emotionally than ever before:
Anna is twenty years old and studies historical science. She is the first in her family to gain admission to university. It is rather unusual for white people to study and universities have no place for people who are different, Anna tries to live up to this privilege as best she can. She keeps her head down and prefers to swallow injustice rather than cause trouble and attract more attention.
But through her studies she becomes more and more aware that all the supposedly small injustices against her have much deeper roots, and that the racist narratives influence her own life to this day. The individual fates of her ancestors, which she learns about during her studies, are becoming increasingly important to her. Anna begins to recognize herself as a part of the discriminatory system.
Her brother Alexander was right, even though the colonization and enslavement of white people was hundreds of years ago, they are still not free from violence. Anna has to painfully admit this when Alexander is suddenly and unexpectedly torn from her life. Everything changes in one fell swoop and the reserved young woman becomes Anna, the white activist who joins the “White Lives Matter” movement.

release date: 16.10.2024

available as hardcover on

Cover by akut_herakut
Pictures by Sandra Lehmann

malik

The strong message of freedom fighter Maureen shows young Malik the way to freedom. An afrofuturistic dystopia by author and activist Jasmina Kuhnke.
At the age of six you are actually too young to work but you can go to school. This doesn't apply to Malik. Malik is Black. Together with his older sister Linda, he found refuge in the silos while fleeing from the white supremacists. Here in the resistance community they are safe from the regime that has led the world into the abyss. But is a life of fear a dignified life? Are the deprivations and hard work worth it?
The world changes for Malik when he sneaks into a meeting and meets the legendary freedom fighter Maureen.

published: 06. 02.2024

available as ebook on

Black Heart

Jasmina Kuhnke is an unmistakable voice in the fight against racism in this country. In her first novel she talks about what it does to you to always be noticed. The protagonist of her book, a black first-person narrator, grows up on the edge of the Ruhr area in the 1990s. A violent stepfather rages at home, there is little support at school and a lot of exclusion. At a children's birthday party, a neo-Nazi suddenly appears in the door when the doorbell is rung. The protagonist knows what it's like to expect the worst every day, until the worst becomes self-evident Where doors open for others, they close more and more for the first-person narrator until she is convinced that she has nothing to offer to the world. She gets into a violent relationship and reinforces her dependency with two pregnancies. Only when it is almost too late she is able to free herself and the children.
Kuhnke's book shows how racism weaves itself into the souls of the people affected. It won't let anyone go easily because it hurts.

published: 19.10.2021

available as hardcover, paperback and ebook on

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Black Heart

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