May Ayim
May Ayim (May 3, 1960 - August 9, 1996) a poet, activist, and essayist, was born in Hamburg, Germany in May 1960 to a Ghanaian father and white German mother. She grew up in Münster with a foster family, studied pedagogy in Regensburg, and lived in Berlin from the mid-eighties. Ayim became known for her writings on racism in Germany. A mentee of Audre Lorde, she was one of the founding members of the Initiative Schwarze Deutsche (Initiative of Black Germans/ISD). One of her most popular works is Farbe bekennen: Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte (published in English as Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out), which she published in 1986 with Dagmar Schultz and Katharina Oguntoye. German newspaper Die Tageszeitung called it a "milestone in the Afro-German movement", the work is partially a historical treatise, with the addition of interviews and biographies of Black women across different generations. For example, Ayim writes: "I grew up with the feeling of having to prove that a 'half-breed', a 'negro', an 'orphan' is a full human being." Shortly after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Ayim committed suicide in Berlin on August 9, 1996. Prior to her death, she published the poetry collection blues in schwarz weiss (blues in black and white) and her final collection, nacht gesang (night chant), was published posthumously in 1997.
Text Source: Spiegel Magazine Online with translation and additional information by keondra bills freemyn
Archives
May Ayim Archive, Freie Universität Berlin →
Digital Resources
Digital German Women's Archive (in German) →
Remembering Afro-German Intellectual May Ayim, Black Perspectives →
May Ayim Translated Poems from ‘Der Black Atlantic’ →
Hope in My Heart Trailer, Third World Newsreel →