Fatima Chapter Summaries

The overall message of this novel is that there are different types of racism that exists at different times, in different places. This space of Germany in 1980 allows Paul Beatty to acknowledge and reflect on several different kinds of racism because, within this time period in Germany, there are many different layers of racial tensions that exist. These layers include the progression of racist ideology throughout Nazi Germany, West Berlin Germany, East Berlin Germany, and post reunification Germany. Moreover, in relation to the main characters’ own personal experiences of racism in Germany, the types of racial prejudices that they encounter are unique in their own way. This is largely due to the fact that Ferguson carries a history of slavery

185). This occurrence of Fatima having this phobia is very symbolic of the overall message conveyed by this novel that racism can be experienced in many different forms, depending on the time, the place, as well as the individual. As Fatima has lived a life surrounded by racist white Germans in East Berlin, she ultimately dies from not being able to live with the escalated hatred within German society when the Berlin wall falls. Thus, the underlying cause of Fatima's leukophobia was the increasingly racist environment that progressed after Germany’s reunification. Ferguson describes Fatima’s “charred skeleton sitting in the lotus position in the middle of Bernauerstrasse, cracking in the wind,” as ultimately “what Fatima wanted, to be skinless and hairless, featureless really” (pg. 185). She felt this way because white Germans were constantly treating her and other people like her as outsiders, despite Germany being their homeland. So, it is not surprising that at some point she began to associate everything white with hate and destruction. For Slumberland, Fatima's illness and death symbolizes that racism and hate only leads to destruction, death, and even more hatred. As Fatima wrote in her death note, all she ever wanted was for people to treat each other as equals. Due to

However, these false claims about East Germany disregarded how the presence of blacks in society had not been directly addressed after the Nazi-era concluded and the wall was built. Since issues with racism were not confronted head on, anti-black racism continued to play a major role in the life of East Germans. As a result, Afro Germans like Fatima and Klaudia were segregated from the white German and treated as the “others” within their own homeland. Then, when the Berlin Wall fell, this anti-black racism increased. With the West reunified with the East, both sides experienced an increased population of blacks in their society. Thus, white Germans were not quite sure how to react to these social cases of encountering more black. But, since communist officials were not around to protect Germany’s non-racist image in the media and so on, these anti-black racist cases did not go unnoticed. And, more reports of racial violence were recorded, instead of being ignored solely to protect the false image of what communism looked like in East