From Link to Link: From Downtown LA to Germany's Young Black Women Authors

Start point: Apple Store!

The starting point for this essay: 

I went to downtown LA to see the brand new Apple store, which is a grand rehab of a 1920s movie palace at 8th and Broadway.  (Here).

May Company(ies)

Across the street is a massive old flagship May Company department store, in the process of renovation.  

Another historic May company, the mid-city May Company at Wilshire & Fairfax, is about to open as the museum of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.   

Mykita = Berlin

Meanwhile, a block south of the Apple store, there is the 1930 art deco landmark, Eastern Columbia Building, now converted into condos.

On the ground floor, I noticed the Mykita eyeglasses and sunglasses store.  Mykita is positioned as fine handwork frames which are designed and hand-made in Berlin. 

Going to the Mykita website, there's a lot of eyeglasses, and a blog, and the blog has a post, Five Fab Books for International Women's Day.   

One of the five books is in German, Alice Hasters | Was Weiße Menschen Nicht Über Rassismus Hören Wollen Aber Wissen Sollten (2019) (What White People Don't Want to Hear about Racism, but Should).

Alice Hasters

Going to YouTube, there are many video interviews with Alice Hasters, speaking both German and English.  Her book is available only in German.   

A German Wikipedia page describes Alice Hasters as born in Cologne, with a black African-American mother and German father, and she went to part of high school in Philadelphia.  (Thus, she's fluently bilingual.)   She's described as a German journalist, a book author, and also an experienced podcaster.  Her book was a German #3 best-seller in mid-2020.  See also an English Wiki page here.  

At YouTube, see an English-language interview with Hasters from an event at University of Bayreuth Africa center.   See also a May 2021English interview with Hasters, "Unpacking Racism in Germany and the US," here.  It's in a video series called Black Germans.

Alice Hasters

Leynes

Looking around YouTube for Alice Hasters also led me to a fascinating YouTube channel by a woman "Leynes," a young black woman who's reviewed a huge book list, including Hasters' book.   

See the "Books by Leynes" book channel here (18,000 subscribers) and find the October 2020 review of Hasters, by Leynes, here. 

If I'm reading this right, Leynes has put an amazing 925 reviews on Goodreads - here.  She's the third-most followed member of Goodreads in all of Germany.   I haven't found any bio on Leynes.  She might have a South African accent in English (?? or not), she commonly reviews books in French as well as English and German, and she even wrote a 2019 review of a Russian book (!) by Kanata Konami while on a language exchange in Minsk.   

Leynes

Leynes

(BTW, besides the Hasters book, Leynes strongly recommends another young Black woman's German-language book, Exit Racism by Tupoka Ogette.) 

Tupoka Ogette, author, Exit Racism

Video of Tupoka Ogette here.