Comrades of Color - (Protest, Culture & Society) by Quinn Slobodian (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In keeping with the tenets of socialist internationalism, the political culture of the German Democratic Republic strongly emphasized solidarity with the non-white world: children sent telegrams to Angela Davis in prison, workers made contributions from their wages to relief efforts in Vietnam and Angola, and the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Ho Chi Minh, and Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired public memorials. Despite their prominence, however, scholars have rarely examined such displays in detail. Through a series of illuminating historical investigations, this volume deploys archival research, ethnography, and a variety of other interdisciplinary tools to explore the rhetoric and reality of East German internationalism.

Review Quotes

"This volume is exemplary in a number of ways...The engaging topics and fine-grained analysis of the interactions of situated individuals and groups in and beyond the GDR make the essays ideal for use in upper-level undergraduate and graduate seminars." - German Studies Review

"The chapters in the edited volume provide nuanced cases of East German idealism and the limitations of its practice, which belied a variety of racial prejudices and tensions... the interdisciplinary and extended geographic scope of this edited volume successfully furthers a number of interrelated fields relating to the role of the GDR and the socialist world in the Cold War, race and their continuing legacies." - Journal of Contemporary History

"This is an important volume, providing a number of helpful interventions to a growing field. It ought to be commended for its unorthodox inclusion of primary sources, as well as its broad interdisciplinary approach, which reflects the multi-faceted nature of the topic it approaches." - Slavonic and East European Review

"This is far and away the most creative book available in English on East German foreign relations. Quinn Slobodian has pulled together fresh contributions from many of the leading experts on the GDR's interaction with the Global South." - William Glenn Gray, Purdue University

"Comrades of Color is an important and original contribution to debates about the entangled histories of the Second and Third Worlds during the Cold War. Thought-provoking and carefully curated, the essays in this exciting collection will be indispensable for research and teaching on the history of socialist internationalism." - Celia Donert, University of Liverpool