Alice Hasters, German journalist, author, and podcaster, as well as a 2023 Fellow at the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles, joined bestselling author Morgan Jerkins for an intimate reading and discussion on Black feminism.
Alice Haster’s autobiographical book Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, ''What White People Don't Want to Hear About Racism,'' published by Hanser Verlag, interrogates the structural racism which is present in German society and permeates every aspect of private life. The entrenchment of racism in social structures is often invisible to white subjects but has profound effects on BIPoC, who must contend with cultural intolerance, discrimination, and the pressure to assimilate on a daily basis. Racism does not merely belong to the right-wing fringes of society.
This discussion explored Black feminism in a trans-Atlantic context, examining the lived experience of Black women in the USA and Europe, including the commonalities and differences, as well as constructing ways of overturning structures of racism and oppression.
Alice Hasters is a journalist, author, and podcaster. She studied at the German School of Journalism in Munich and after graduating worked for the ''Tagesschau'' and Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, among others. Since 2016, Hasters has been producing the podcast ''Feuer & Brot'' (tr: Fire & Bread) about politics and pop culture together with Maximiliane Häcke. In her publications, she deals with the topics of Afro-German identity, racism, and intersectionality. Hasters was named culture journalist of the year in 2020 by medium magazine. She is the author of Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, published by Hanser Verlag, and is currently a 2023 Fellow at the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles.
Morgan Jerkins is the author of the New York Times bestseller This Will Be My Undoing as well as the critically acclaimed books, Wandering In Strange Lands and Caul Baby. She holds a Bachelor’s in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. A Forbes 30 Under 30 Leader in Media alumna and ASME Next award-winning journalist, Jerkins has been an editor at Medium, ESPN, and New York Magazine, among others. Her short-form work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, ELLE, Vogue, and The Atlantic, among many other publications. She’s held professorships at Pacific University, Leipzig University in Germany, Columbia University, and the New School. She’s currently based in Harlem.
