{"id":54946,"date":"2017-09-08T15:10:03","date_gmt":"2017-09-08T15:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54946"},"modified":"2022-12-16T03:33:52","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T03:33:52","slug":"remembering-afro-german-intellectual-may-ayim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54946","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Afro-German Intellectual May Ayim"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remembering Afro-German Intellectual May Ayim<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Black Perspectives<\/a>
\n2017-09-06<\/p>\n

Tiffany Florvil<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of History
\nUniversity of New Mexico<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nMay Ayim<\/a> (Photo: Orlanda Frauenverlag)<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

It has been almost twenty-one years since Black German<\/a> activist, educator, writer, and public intellectual May Ayim<\/a> died on August 9, 1996 at the age of 36. After facing some personal setbacks and a recent diagnosis of multiple sclerosis<\/a>, Ayim committed suicide by jumping from her apartment building in Berlin-Kreuzberg<\/a>. She also suffered from depression, which was often exacerbated by the psychological toil that everyday German racism<\/a> had on her. Even though Ayim was born and raised by adoptive parents in Germany<\/a>, some white Germans, including her adoptive parents, continued to harbor racist views that denied her humanity as a Black German citizen in a post-Holocaust society<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her death shocked her colleagues and friends near and far. From South Africa<\/a> to the United States<\/a>, people sent their tributes, in which they recognized how much she inspired them through her writing and spoken word performances. Much like her mentor Caribbean-American poet Audre Lorde<\/a>, Ayim, too, believed in the \u201csubversive power of lyrical language.\u201d1<\/sup> As a talented and well-known writer at home and abroad, her poetry and prose served as a form of intellectual activism<\/a> and as a medium to incite socio-political change. In fact, Ayim derived a key source of political and emotional energy from her writing, which was a constitutive element of her activism.<\/p>\n

May Ayim was not unlike other Black diasporic women such as Claudia Jones<\/a> or the Nardal sisters<\/a>, producing materials that shaped diasporic culture and politics and that promoted Black intellectualism and internationalism<\/a>. She integrated diverse styles, such as the Blues<\/a>, that reflected her wide-ranging interests in and ties to the transnational Black diaspora<\/a>. Ayim even incorporated West African Adinkra symbols<\/a> in her first poetry volume blues in schwarz weiss<\/em> (Blues in Black White<\/em><\/a>) \u2013 representing her Ghanaian roots. In the volume, poems such as \u201cafro-deutsch I,\u201d \u201cafro-deutsch II,\u201d \u201cautumn in germany,\u201d \u201ccommunity,\u201d and \u201csoul sister\u201d tackled the themes of identity, difference, community, and marginalization, reflecting her (and other Black Germans\u2019) experiences in Germany.2<\/sup> She also used her writing to negotiate her Black Germanness and to write herself into German society and the Black diaspora…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a talented and well-known writer at home and abroad, her poetry and prose served as a form of intellectual activism and as a medium to incite socio-political change. In fact, Ayim derived a key source of political and emotional energy from her writing, which was a constitutive element of her activism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,28,1196,8,25],"tags":[3228,26485,2948,2946,27287,27286],"class_list":["post-54946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-europe","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-women","tag-afro-germans","tag-black-perspectives","tag-germany","tag-may-ayim","tag-tiffany-florvil","tag-tiffany-n-florvil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54946"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64074,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54946\/revisions\/64074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}