Ika Hügel-Marshall » Author | Publications…Books…Readings | DEU / ENG


Ika Hügel-Marshall reading the poem Weinen from May Ayim at the Theater Morgenstern in Berlin on March 11, 2022 during the event “Ein Abend mit Film und Buch zu May Ayim.” This was Ika’s last public performance.


crying

crying does not mean
that the world will perish tomorrow
crying means
that we are still able
to feel pain

crying does not mean
that the world will perish tomorrow
crying means that
it hurts when we allow it to perish

Translation: Dagmar Schultz

Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany

Invisible Woman:  Growing Up Black In German

Book (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-4331-0278-3

Invisible Woman 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.

Republished and available by Peter Lang Publishing New York »

Articles, contributions and cooperations

  • Hügel-Marshall, Ika (2020): Crossing Borders – Overcoming Boundaries. In: Kraft, Marion (Hg.): Children of the Liberation. Transatlantic Experiences and Perspective of Black Germans of the Post-War Generation. Edited and translated by Marion Kraft. Oxford: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-178874-688-5S, S. 171–182.

  • Kraft, Marion (Hg.) (2020): Children of the Liberation. Transatlantic Experiences and Perspectives of Black Germans. Compiled in cooperation with Ika Hügel-Marshall. Translated in cooperation with Beatrix Loghin. Oxford/Bern/Berlin/Wien: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-1-78874-688-5.

  • Hügel-Marshall, Ika (2020): ADEFRA: How it All Began – A Conversation with Ria Cheatom, Jasmin Eding, and Judy Gummich. In: Kraft, Marion (Hg.): Children of the Liberation. Transatlantic Experiences and Perspective of Black Germans of the Post-War Generation. Edited and translated by Marion Kraft. Oxford: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-178874-688-5S, S. 351–368.

  • Ika Hügel-Marshall is co-author of the script for the film Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 and one of the interviewees in the film.

Reading tours

In 1996, Ika Hügel-Marshall received the Audre Lorde Literary Award for the completion of her autobiography. The book was published in Germany by Orlanda Frauenverlag in 1998. Continuum International Books published the translation in hardback in 2000 and in paperback in 2002. Peter Lang republished the book in 2008.

In Germany, the author gave over 50 readings. In 2001, Ika Hügel-Marshall was on an extensive reading tour in the US through the Midwest and on the East Coast. She read, among others, at the University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin, the Chicago Public Library, Earlham College, Howard University, West Virginia University, Middlebury College, the Goethe Institute in New York City and at New York University's Africana Studies Program & Institute of African American Affairs. Everywhere, the audiences were large and varied, and the response was very positive.

In 2004, Ika was invited for a reading and a lecture by Grinnell College, Iowa. In 2005, she did a reading tour at universities in Portland, Oregon, and in San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, as well as at Sonoma State University and at the Hand to Hand martial arts school in Oakland. Again, the tour was highly successful.

In February/March 2007, the author did a reading tour which took her to the University of Victoria, B.C., Berkeley University, the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, the University of Kentucky, the University of Tennessee, Franklin&Marshall College, Johns Hopkins University, West Virginia University, the University of Rochester, Connecticut College and Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.
Since 2012 she travelled with the film Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 and with her book in Europe, in the United States, in Namibia, South Africa and Brazil.