{"id":7056,"date":"2010-05-10T22:16:26","date_gmt":"2010-05-10T22:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=7056"},"modified":"2015-03-08T19:44:44","modified_gmt":"2015-03-08T19:44:44","slug":"fuhlst-du-dich-als-deutsche-oder-als-afrikanerin-may-ayims-search-for-an-afro-german-identity-in-her-poetry-and-essays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=7056","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;F\u00fchlst du dich als Deutsche oder als Afrikanerin?&#8217;: May Ayim&#8217;s Search for an Afro-German Identity in her Poetry and Essays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1111\/j.1468-0483.2006.00364.x\" target=\"_blank\">&#8216;F\u00fchlst du dich als Deutsche oder als Afrikanerin?&#8217;: May Ayim&#8217;s Search for an Afro-German Identity in her Poetry and Essays<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www3.interscience.wiley.com\/journal\/118509619\/home\" target=\"_blank\">German Life and Letters<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www3.interscience.wiley.com\/journal\/118600966\/issue\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 59 Issue 4<\/a>\u00a0(October 2006)<br \/>\nPages 500-514<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1111\/j.1468-0483.2006.00364.x\" target=\"_blank\">10.1111\/j.1468-0483.2006.00364.x<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.grinnell.edu\/academic\/german\/faculty\/michaels\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Jennifer Michaels<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of German; Samuel R. and Marie-Louise Rosenthal Professor of Humanities<br \/>\n<em>Grinnell College, Iowa<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Until her suicide in 1996, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/May_Ayim\" target=\"_blank\">May Ayim<\/a> was one of the leading voices among <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Afro-Germans\" target=\"_blank\">Afro-German<\/a> women and the group&#8217;s most prominent poet. In her poetry and essays, she addresses such topics as marginalisation, multiculturalism and identity formation and describes her struggle to live in a society where she encountered racial prejudice and stereotypes. <strong>Her texts map the stages in her development from rejecting being black and wishing to be white to affirming her biracial identity, which she came to view as a source of her creativity.<\/strong> In her poetry she not only depicts aspects of the Afro-German experience but also powerfully evokes feelings of abandonment, loneliness, love and death. In this article I will set Ayim&#8217;s work into the context of the Afro-German experience and highlight issues that were of particular concern to her.<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the article <a href=\"http:\/\/www3.interscience.wiley.com\/cgi-bin\/fulltext\/118600970\/PDFSTART\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;F\u00fchlst du dich als Deutsche oder als Afrikanerin?&#8217;: May Ayim&#8217;s Search for an Afro-German Identity in her Poetry and Essays German Life and Letters Volume 59 Issue 4\u00a0(October 2006) Pages 500-514 DOI: 10.1111\/j.1468-0483.2006.00364.x Jennifer Michaels, Professor of German; Samuel R. and Marie-Louise Rosenthal Professor of Humanities Grinnell College, Iowa Until her suicide in 1996, May [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,28,125,1196,8,25],"tags":[3228,2945,2948,2947,2946],"class_list":["post-7056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-europe","category-identitydevelopment","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-women","tag-afro-germans","tag-german-life-and-letters","tag-germany","tag-jennifer-michaels","tag-may-ayim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7056","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=7056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}