“Mother Europa, I am your daughter” – Negotiating Afropean Belonging and African Diasporic History in Poetry 

By Elisa Götzenberger

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made headlines in October 2025 with his comment about the “problem in the cityscape” caused by, according to conservative-right voices, the influx of migration starting ten years ago (Grasnick). He reiterates and underpins a broader attitude in German society that perceives the diversity of nationalities among German whiteness as a problem. This is not only regarded as an issue in Germany but is viewed as a threat to the imagined white hegemony in Europe. In this logic, migration to and diasporic presences in Europe are viewed as a problem in their power to undermine such constructions. People belonging to diasporic communities in Europe are often well familiar with remarks such as “where are you really from” (Oholi 9) and “go back to your country” (Pitts, Afropean 4) that echo the essence of Merz’s statement, othering them based on a perceived European racialized ideal. 

Literary scholar Jeanette Oholi and photographer/writer Johny Pitts bring this into connection with the experiences of Blackness and the African diaspora in Europe and show how such discourses ostracize Blackness from European identity. Both of them counter this assumption. Pitts does so in his travelogue Afropean: Notes from Black Europe (2019), through which the term Afropean was popularized in the scholarly engagement with the African diaspora in Europe. Oholi approaches the topic from a German literary studies perspective in Afropäische Ästhetiken: Plurale Schwarze Identitätsentwürfe in literarischen Texten des 21. Jahrhunderts(2024), in which she addresses how contemporary literary productions by members of the African Diaspora in Europe counter hegemonic narratives of Europeanness and in turn affirms their plural identities. This essay seeks to engage with these terms in the analysis of a poem that was published in the online journal The Afropean titled “Mother Europa,” written by an anonymous poet under the pen name Zaifoz. The poem’s central themes are family, connection, and motherhood and refer to both the personal relationship of the speaker to Africa and Europe, as well as the one between the two continents. Therefore, this essay argues for the importance of spaces like The Afropean journal that provide a space for Afropean artists and authors for the expression of counter-stories to hegemonic discourses. The specific poem speaks to the plurality of Europe and affirms Afropean identity, which is aesthetically expressed through the focus on connectivity, stylized in the use of kinship terms as metaphors for belonging, intrinsically linking Europe and Africa and its diasporas together. 

Crossing Hegemonic Borders: Diasporic History and Literary Resistance 

Europe’s curated self-image of homogeneity and self-containment are made tangible by Merz’s comment and the other exemplary remarks mentioned above. The “go back to where you came from” comment was taken from an anecdote told by Pitts and especially embodies this. He concludes it by writing “[m]y skin had disguised my Europeanness; ‘European’ was still being used as a synonym for ‘white’” (Afropean 4). This encounter demonstrates how Europe sees, and narrates, itself as white. Oholi speaks of a normalization of whiteness (34). This is accompanied by the denial of outside influences on the continent, which results in the denial of European identity to those who could only be here because Europe is, in fact, not a self-contained space of whiteness. In Pitt’s case, his skin color is perceived as an indication of non-Europeanness. For the white man he encountered this was the basis on which to deny him belonging. People that are read as non-white are seen as racialized Other and, in this logic, can only ever be migrants and foreigners, “forever just arriving” (El-Tayeb xxv) because their presence heterogenizes Europe and in turn upsets an imagined homogenous white identity. Diversity becomes “less a reality than a threat to the continent’s very essence” (El-Tayeb xvii). Therefore, this supposed threat is countered with the denial of Europeanness, which in turn also denies that there is a possibility of plural diasporic identities. Therefore, the homogenous construction of a “white” Europe erases the reality of diversity and, through its dominance and power to determine the narrative, denies a long history of African presences in Europe and historical connections between the continents. Fatima El-Tayeb’s words capture this: “Europeans possessing the (visual) markers of Otherness are eternal newcomers  . . . defined by a static foreignness overriding both individual experience and historical facts” (xxv). 

There has been a long-documented Black presence on the European continent, as well as an (unequal) exchange between Europe and Africa. The African diaspora has established itself as a result of movement caused by colonialism, significantly slavery, and postcolonial migration from the African continent to Europe (Oholi 11). The presence of African people, however, is not only a (post-)colonial one. Black Central Europe, a network of historians studying African presences in the larger German speaking region, attest for a historical presence of Black diasporas. The project documents this from the year 1000 until the present day and looks at, amongst others, literary texts, letters, state documents, as well as biographies (“Our Collection”). They delineate and present the Black diaspora in central Europe as a historical development that is connected to both colonialist and imperialist as well as liberal forms of cultural exchange, such as art (“Who We Are”). This history, as much as white Europeanness denies and marginalizes it, did not pass Europe without a trace, and contemporary African diasporas are proof of that. 

This can also be seen in Pitts’ travelogue, in which he explores Black diasporas in eight major European cities, mapping out an Afropea and communities that are shaped by both European and African influences. The term ‘Afropean’ is, therefore, one way of conceptualizing diasporic identity and makes visible both diversity in Europe, and the possibility of plural identities. Pitts writes that it “encouraged [him] to think of [him]self as whole and unhyphenated: Afropean” (Afropean 1, emphasis in original). He does not have to view himself as being two separate “halves,” or has to choose one identity over the other, showing that there is the “possibility of living in and with more than one idea: Africa and Europe . . . without being mixed-this, half-that or black-other” (Afropean 1). This merging and pluralizing contribute to the destabilization of the rigid construction of Europeanness. It signifies multiple belongings as opposed to being an eternal newcomer, migrant, foreigner, Other (Oholi 32). 

Literature is one medium where this can be negotiated and hegemonic narratives resisted, which Oholi outlines comprehensively in Afropäische Ästhetiken. She contends that by crossing hegemonic borders and presenting plural Black identities, literature is a tool of resistance against constructions of white Europeanness. This is, writes Oholi, “weil ‘Schwarzsein’ eben nicht externalisiert wird, sondern sich die Stimmen und Figuren in Europa positionieren und Europa Teil ihrer pluralen Identitäten wird“ (21).^[1] She identifies three aesthetic strategies through which this is done in contemporary Black literature, namely ambiguity, movement, and connection. They all lead to a pluralization of Black identities by resisting assigned social positions, opening the possibilities of more than one home(land) and belongings, and interweaving multiplicity (Oholi 52, 99, 145, 199). The following analysis will show that the poem “Mother Europa” denotes Europe and Africa with kinship terms, drawing on a metaphor of the speaker’s connection to Africa and Europe as a family relation, to signify belonging. It proposes connection as the main strategy to subvert hegemonic constructions of Europe as white, thereby evoking a plural Afropean identity.      

Constructing Afropean Identity Through Diasporic Connections to Africa and Europe 

The poem “Mother Europa” by Zaifoz was published in The Afropean, which was established as a space of engaging the facets of Black diasporas and/in Europe across a variety of media and disciplines (“About”). The poem is a dialogue between two unidentified speakers and begins with the question of the relationship between the second speaker and her mother (line 1) which leads to the elaboration thereof in the rest of the piece. The title “Mother Europa” already indicates that the role of the mother is not occupied by another speaker, but rather by a metaphoric anthropomorphism of the continent of Europe. By describing her experience of Europe as a Black person embedded in a family relationship, the speaker affirms an Afropean identity that disrupts the hegemony of European whiteness. Therefore, connection is the major counterstrategy employed by the poem. 

The poem speaks to the struggles of being Afropean by showing how the speaker is denied the relation to her mother, which goes against her own perception and ultimately initiates an identity crisis. The speaker introduces the conflicted relationship to her mother, Europe, by stating “I never could call my mother, mother / My grandmother was my mother, even though I was raised by my mother” (lines 2-3). The grandmother, as becomes clear in the later course of the poem, is an anthropomorphism of Africa. This implies that the speaker is relegated to Africa rather than Europe by larger society due to characteristics that mark her as visibly different from dominant constructions of Europeanness, similar to how Pitts is profiled in his anecdote. Thus, motherhood and being related become questions of immediately visible markers of heritage. This aspect becomes more explicit in the following lines: 

“Though  . . . they told me my mother was white. They told me my mother was Catholic. Worse, they told me she has only ever been white and Catholic that / she would never love children with other colours.” (lines 12-13)

These two lines show that the idea of a non-white European is antithetical and therefore considered illegitimate. This is highlighted by the anaphora that both refers to the constructedness of this logic by underlining the discursive nature (“they told me”), as well as the restrictive categories of “white” and “Catholic” through repetition. The adverbs “only” and “ever” set the definitive limit that the discourse naturalizes. This is reflected in the experiences of a “them” who can be identified as refugees and migrants that had to flee their “mother” to live with an “unloving father” (lines 5-7). It is left ambiguous whether the father refers to Europe, nevertheless, he does represent a society that is unwelcoming towards those he deems as Other. Both the denial of her mother being her mother and the experiences of migrants stand in opposition to the nurturing the speaker herself experiences, marking her as part of a new generation that is removed from the immediate refugee/immigrant experience, but who is nevertheless not seen as European. She experiences Mother Europa as a teacher, provider, caretaker which is highlighted in the choice of verbs, the repetition of “taught” (line 10) and “gave” (line 10). Additionally, the speaker contends that her “mother was always and patiently there” (line 17) through the alienation she experiences because of her contrary perception. 

This culminates in the description of an identity crisis that is thematically underlined by the emotion of fear, evoked by the adjective “afraid,” intensified in the repetition by the adverb “very” (line 15). While this rests on a very descriptive level, the poem becomes more emotive in evoking the picture of a parentless child through recent loss. The speaker poses the question of how that child would feel. While the created image already insinuates those feelings, the question becomes rhetorical when she provides the answer: “I was alone, I did not know who I was” (line 15). The speaker is unsettled and confused, her own perceived identity becomes uncertain because of the denial and otherization imposed on her by the hegemonic society and the marginalization of refugees/migrants she does not seem to share. Her perception of Mother Europa and her place as her daughter is rattled and dissolves into self-conscious confusion. 

Furthermore, a relationship between mother and grandmother, Europe and Africa, is also established as one of inequalities that nevertheless addresses that Europe is not and never has been a closed-off space of whiteness. This realization later leads to the affirmation of the speaker’s Afropean identity. However, first she affirms the plurality of Europe, based on a historical perspective that is traced into the present: 

“Old Europa, your history did not start today / Europa, you are white and black and all other colours. / Europa, you are Christian and Muslim and hundreds of other religions . . .  Mother, you are many.” (lines 20-22, 25) 

The poem describes a continuity with the anaphoric repetition of “Europa” moving from the historic past into the now. While beliefs around history are constructed by contemporary discourses, white Europeanness being one of them, history did not start with those narratives. It came before, and different people will tell different versions thereof. The poem does that by bringing “[o]ld Europa” into the present, affirming its diversity by breaking up binaries. There is no white-and-Christian hegemony and Black and brown and Muslim Other. This is highlighted by the present tense verb “are” in lines 21-22, as well as the subject complements that are conjoined on an equal level by “and.” Instead of evoking a sense of center and margin, it pluralizes presences in Europe on an equal level. Therefore, it is shown that Europe and Africa stand in a mutual relationship that has influenced each continent and ultimately leads to a diverse presence that stands in opposition to the limiting narrative of a white-only European identity that imagines itself as existing within an exclusive, self-contained space.   

The kinship connection presented in the poem can be interpreted in multiple ways but always connects back to a relationship between mother-daughter and grandmother-granddaughter. This depicts a lineage that shows that the speaker is one filial generation removed from Africa, making her part of the generation of the Black community born in the diaspora. However, it also establishes a link between Europe and Africa that can be read in two ways: Africa is the grandmother because she is the cradle of humankind or, perhaps not mutually exclusive, Africa gave life to Europe by being the object of extraction and the ground on which Europe accumulated wealth and power, leaving grandmother Africa bleeding, as is described in line 14. Europe has left her mark on Africa and her people: wars, loss of identity, destruction (lines 14, 25). But the influence goes both ways, as historian Olivette Otele points out, “Africa has exerted [influence] abroad for several millennia” (218), just as Europe has influenced Africa.

Seeing these interconnections, the speaker comes to the realization that “Mother Europa, I am your daughter” (line 19), because she is the product of a history that asks for and makes possible multiple identifications, which is inscribed in the merged term Afropean. Her statement precludes the anaphoric assertion of Europe’s plurality (lines 19-21) and follows as a single, short line after several long and dense ones, sounding of clarity after the period of confusion. Connectivity becomes central here because it is the gift of “a box whose eyes could reach all of the universe” (lines 17-18) that made her see beyond the limitations put on her by white society and the resulting sense of a loss of self. This metaphoric description of electronic devices circumscribes their ability to connect people around the world and access just about anything there is to know. This highlights the importance of community and/in online spaces because this helped the speaker understand how Europe and Africa are connected and reaffirmed her experience of her relationship to Europa and thus to Europe. By stating that she is “Europa’s daughter,” she is claiming Europeanness for herself despite the marginalization affecting her and other non-white Europeans. By concluding “[a]nd I still see my grandmother as my mother, too” (line 28), the speaker gives equal importance to her African and European heritage. She is neither “half one and half other,” they both co-exist in her, making her Afropean. 

Poetry remains a powerful medium to amplify voices of resistance, and “Mother Europa” is an example thereof that counters European hegemony by affirming the continent’s diversity and the diaspora’s belonging and the subsequent possibility of plural identities. The attempt to construct Europe as a white continent cannot hold up against both history and contemporary Black presences. The analysis has shown that the kinship metaphors powerfully express connectivity, as suggested by Oholi. The connection between mother and grandmother speaks to the connection between Europe and Africa that has existed throughout history, and of which the daughter is a product, thus making her a reality that lies outside the possibility of the constructed borders of white Europeanness. It is nevertheless not any less real, an issue that Europe is struggling with, as Merz’s comment indicates. This is why platforms like The Afropean online journal and Black Central Europeare such important resources and sites of resistance. They are easily accessible and posit a counter picture to hegemonic discourses while offering space for artistic expressions that are powerfully disruptive and affirmative at the same time. 

Works Cited

“About.” Afropean, afropean.com/about/. Accessed 6 March 2026. 

El-Tayeb, Fatima. European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe. U of Minnesota P, 2011. 

Grasnick, Belinda. “Merz’s Problem mit dem ‘Stadtbild.’” Tagesschau, 17 Oct. 2025, www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/merz-stadtbild-migration-100.html. Accessed 6 March 2026. 

Oholi, Jeanette. Afropäische Ästhetik: Plurale Schwarze Identitätsentwürfe in literarischen Texten des 21. Jahrhunderts. Transcript, 2024. 

Pitts, Johny. Afropean: Notes from Black Europe. Penguin Books, 2019. 

—. “Sunday ‘Poem’: ‘Mother Europa’ by Zaifoz.” Afropean, 26 October 2014, afropean.com/sunday-poem-mother-europa-by-zaifoz/. Accessed, 13.01.2025.

“Our Collection.” Black Central Europe, blackcentraleurope.com/sources/. Accessed 7 March 2026.

Otele, Olivette. African Europeans: An Untold Story. Hurst, 2020. 

“Who We Are.” Black Central Europe, blackcentraleurope.com/who-we-are/. Accessed 7 March 2026. 

^[1] “because being Black is not externalized, instead voices and characters position themselves in Europe and Europe becomes part of their plural identities,” my translation.