The Act of James Knopf is a poetic negotiation of Afro-German cultural identity. While Black Germans were still seen as exotic and foreign in their own country in the 1980s, in the new millennium they are Germans with a footnote of migration background. In a country that long understood itself as homogeneously white and Christian, "deviant" identities must be constantly renegotiated and radically addressed. The Act of James Knopf serves as both negotiation and reckoning. The verses traverse the German landscape with poetic skill and the marginal perspective of an "other" German, who remains attuned to the excesses of German, racist everyday reality and the colonial continuity. Beyond multicultural romanticism, Philipp Khabo Köpsell unmasks the German dominant culture while simultaneously creating a protective space for everything in between.