Frame and Preparation
Also By Mail
Conceptual Frames and Background
- multilingualism
- family
- Black German studies
- migration
- haunting
Introduction
Olumide Popoola is a London-based Nigerian-German author who writes in English and German. The play Also by Mail is set in Lagos, Nigeria, but part of the action also takes place in Germany. It was published in the Witnessed Book Series, which aims to make Black German experience more accessible worldwide. The book was originally published in English and employs some Nigerian Pidgin.
I usually teach this text in an upper-level culture seminar focused on questions of multilingualism. It would also work well in a Black German Studies course, or a course focused on migration and identity in relation to questions of race and ethnicity. Thematically it also deals with questions of haunting and family relations. I teach this text over two course periods.
Publisher’s description/summary of the play: “Also by mail is a modern family comedy-drama that follows the experiences of Nigerian German siblings Funke and Wale who fly to Nigeria to bury their suddenly deceased father. Their upbringing clashes with their uncle’s expectations and initial misunderstandings soon come to an éclat. When Wale returns to Germany, frustrated, he is bitterly reminded of how little his father acknowledged and prepared them for racist encounters there. Loss and racism, sibling rivalry and cross-cultural etiquette, the play incorporates and subverses it’s urban, neo-African elements of story-telling to give a contemporary picture of a family that struggles not only with the legacy of its patriarch but with being racialized within the German context as well.”
Text and Discussion
The following document features a two-session discussion of the text. It includes meta-commentary about the questions and the text, so is not intended to be provided directly to students. Rather, it is a teaching guide for the instructor to base lessons off of.
Developed by Kristin Dickinson.