Let us consider, for example, Kafka’s elegant diary entry on 2 August 1914: ‘Germany has declared war on Russia—Swimming in the afternoon.’ From Xiao Hai’s memoir Adrift in the South (Granta Editions) ...
What does it mean to be at war with your own flesh within a culture that already hates the black body? And what does this mean for black women, whose bodies are doubly despised?