3 - Trees, Roots, and Anti-Racism in Ilija Trojanow's Nach der Flucht (2017), Mo Asumang's Roots Germania (2007) and Die Arier (2014), and Elliot Blue's Home? (2018)

Summary

The wild trees have bought me

And will sell you a wind

In the forests of falsehoods

Where your search must not end

—Audre Lorde, “Song”

The works discussed in this chapter echo the discussions in the previous chapter in their insistence on a search for community as a key intervention in the process of place-making. They suggest listening to trees and letting trees and roots speak about exclusion and racism and for anti-racist futures. These works, however, are not explicitly or exclusively about trees; yet focusing on trees offers an angle for interpretation that opens broader political contexts and discussions as part of a continued “search” in “the forest of falsehoods.” Trees in these works connect and re-signify places. They claim place and act in defiance, yet they also speak of exclusions, violations, and violence past and present. What is present in the texts discussed in the previous chapter becomes explicit here: that displacing whiteness and white supremacy is the foundation for developing more racially just relationships. In the previous chapter, I argue for critical perspectives on history and memory; this chapter takes these perspectives and applies them to histories of racism and ideologies of racial supremacy.

Why Trees?

Tree symbolism is deeply engrained in cultural production. One might just think of two popular TV series of the last decade to make this point. During the intro credits of the pilot of the popular Netflix series Bridgerton (created by Chris Van Dusen), the blooming tree symbolizes growth, coming of age, and the hope for (or fear of?) the survival of a bloodline. In an even more popular TV series, Game of Thrones (8 seasons, 2011–2019, created by Benioff and Weiss), the tree in the North is a mystical creature that connects and conjures, maybe saves, but also creates and senses danger. Symbolism of trees continues to evoke both the idea of a dynasty and a “bloodline” and the dark, gothic, romantic, and mystical.

In the German context, forests and trees are also tied to the racist blood and soil ideology of National Socialism, an expression also used by the Nazi Minister of Agriculture, Rudolf Barre, “who pushed for a policy of Naturschutz (protection of nature) as a state priority” (Schama 1995, 82).