Blues in Black and White: A Collection of Essays, Poetry and Conversations

by May Ayim

The ever-engaging work of the controversial Afro-German activist/writer, MayAyim, covers a fascinating range of themes: biography, politics, love as well as the absurdities of everyday life. Her unique ability to passionately transformdiverse subject matters into poetic language is revealed in this important collection of translated pieces. Her play with language is effective and at times transformative, as it expresses and exposes dangerous stereotypes and messages hiddenin the everyday use oflanguage and human behavior. Here, her readers will be surprised and frequentlyconfronted with Ayim's keen and powerful observationsof the complexities of life and the compelling richness of humor and irony within them."These poems [have] passion and irony and always a strong magnetic force...for even her humor, her playing with words and her punch lines never veil the strength of her protest against racism, sexism, and all the other isms that add sadness to our society. In May's voice, I found the echo of other sounds fromthe diaspora. Her unrestrainedness, her humor and lyric expressiveness equal those of Lion-Gontron Damas, one of the fathers of Negritude....An extraordinary voice.Unique and already in the hearts of all of us that are persecuted and fullof thirst."

--Maryse Condi, from the introduction to the German edition.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

179 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2003

About the author

May Ayim (3 May 1960 in Hamburg – 9 August 1996 in Berlin) is the pen name of May Opitz (born Sylvia Adler); she was an Afro-German poet, educator, and activist. The child of a German mother and Ghanaian medical student, she was adopted by a white German family when young. After reconnecting with her father and his family in Ghana, in 1992 she took his surname for a pen name.

Opitz wrote a thesis at the University of Regensburg, Afro-Deutsche: Ihre Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte aus dem Hintergrund gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen (Afro-Germans: Their Cultural and Social History on the Background of Social Change), which was the first scholarly study of Afro-German history. Combined with contemporary materials, it was published as the book Farbe Bekennen (1986). This was translated and published in English as Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out<?i> (1986). It included accounts by many women of Afro-German descent. Ayim worked as an activist to unite Afro-Germans and combat racism in German society. She co-founded Initiative Schwarze Deutsche (Initiative of Black People in Germany) to that purpose in the late 1980s.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[B. P. Rinehart · Rating 5 out of 5]

“i will be African
even if you want me to be german
and i will be german
even if my blackness does not suit you
i will go
yet another step further
to the farthest edge
where my sisters – where my brothers stand
where
o u r
FREEDOM
begins
i will go
yet another step further and another step and
will return
when i want
and remain
borderless and brazen - “borderless and brazen: a poem against the German ‘u-not y.’” (Translated by May Ayim)

One of the great things about poetry is that it can express ideas in a short space that prose would have to take pages to express. That poem above is basically the first chapter of The Souls of Black Folk (“On Spiritual Strivings”) in just a stanza. This poem is just one in an amazing gem of a book that I was lucky to find. This book is an English-language compilation of poems, essays, and interview by the Afro-German activist and writer May Ayim named after her first collection of poetry published in German (Blues in schwarz weiss). I first heard of her last year after reading an article about her by Tiffany Florvil. After reading this book, it is shocking that such a story of someone so crucial could go unknown. Shocking, but not surprising.

i no longer wait
for the better times
midnight blue sky above us
silver stars upon it
hand in hand with you
along the river
trees right and left
desire in their branches
hope in my heart

i straighten up my room
i light a candle
i paint a poem

i no longer kiss my way
down your body
through your navel
into your dreams
my love in your mouth
your fire in my lap
pearls of sweat on my skin

i dress myself warmly
i paint my lips red
i talk to the flowers

i no longer listen
for a sign from you
take out your letters
look at your pictures
conversation with you
till midnight
visions between us
children smiling at us

i open the window wide
i tie my shoes tight
i get my hat

i no longer dream
in lonely hours
your face into time
your shadow is only
a cold figure

i pack the memories up
i blow the candle out
i open the door

i no longer wait
for the better times
i go out into the street
scent of flowers on my skin
umbrella in my hand
along the river
midnight blue sky above me
silver stars upon it
trees
left and right
desire in their branches
hope in my heart

i love you
i wait no longer. – Night Song

May Ayim was born Sylvia Andler on May 3, 1960 in Hamburg to a white German mother and Ghanaian father. She was immediate put up for adoption and went in and out of foster homes (with the main one being the Opitz family). She never had a relationship with her birth mother’s family, but she did reconnect with her father’s family and became especially close to her paternal grandfather (who gets a moving poem in this book). After leaving her adopted family for the last time she went to Berlin and ended-up meeting the woman who would change her life and become the intellectual mentor of Afro-German consciousness, Audre Lorde. Lorde brought her knowledge and experience in the Black Arts & Black Power Movements as well as her experiences in feminism & intersectionality to bare on an entire generation of Afro-German women, Ayim among them. After reading Ayim’s masters’ thesis, Lorde suggested she publish it along with writings from other Afro-German women which culminated in the book Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out. Ayim’s relationship with Lorde, along with her travels abroad, put her in contact with the wider African diaspora both intellectually and literally.

soul sister [lament on the death of Audre Lorde]

saying goodbye
to someone
who is already gone
forever

moments of remembering and lapses of memory
remain
alive in movement
it’s up to us

i think and i say
my personal truth

AUDRE LORDE
Lived
a healthy oppositional black lesbian
life
in a sick society
on a dying planet
she died after 58 years
an ordinary death
diagnosis: cancer

her impact lives on
in her works
our visions
carry the experience
of her words

memories
1984 black german women
together with AUDRE LORDE conceived the term
afro-german
for we had many names
that were not our own
for we knew no names by which we wanted to be called

racism remains
the pale face of a sickness
that privately and publicly eats away at us

today

we mourn the death of a great black poet
a sister and friend and comrade in struggle
her impact lives on
in her works
our visions
carry the experience
of her words

1992 – translated by Tina Campt

One of the big legacies of Ayim was the co-founding of the organization Initiative of Black Germans (ISD) to act as the German NAACP of sorts. The organization helped coordinate her and her comrades’ activism and gave the a platform to speak to the public. She also was very busy writing. The essays in this book do a great job giving the reader a thorough picture of Germany during this time and the history of black people in Germany up-to-that-point. It is clear from May Ayim’s writing that the big event of her generation that galvanized the need for minority groups in Germany to organize was the Reunification of Germany. While I’d been taught that the Reunification was a happy event that brought Germans together, it was clear this was only true for white, Christain Germans. For Germans of African, Turkish, and Jewish descent, Reunification unleashed an avalanche of racism and xenophobia which had been barely held under the surface of both East and West Germany since 1945. Given the news coming out of that country today, to read the accounts, you’d have thought the book was only recently published. It is clear from this book that the Pediga Movement and the AfD were no accidents of the civil war in Syria, but had been in the works for many years.

departure

what should the last words be
fare-well see you again
sometime somewhere?
what should the last deeds be
a last letter a phone call
a soft song?
what should the last
wish be
forgive me
forget me not
I love you?
what should the last thought be
thank you?
thank you

This book sheds light on the historical fact that people of African descent had been a part of German society since at least the Roman times, and would continue to be in the future. I took heart to see how Afro-Germans started to organize themselves and started to help themselves when it became clear the German State would let them be crushed. It was interesting from my Afro-American perspectives to see how Afro-Germans dealt with white supremacy.

One of the issues that Ayim deals with in this book is mental health and self-care. These are things that we understand quite well now in a post-Black Lives Matter context, but were only just being studied (by Ayim herself as one of the first) in an Afro-German context. May Ayim was herself a mental health sufferer and she knew that Afro-Germans were treated very poorly by often openly-racist mental-health physicians and workers. Despite this, there was at this time no alternatives for black folks in Germany so when her mental health took a turn for the worst in the beginning of 1996, the white German doctors did not take it seriously (operating under the idea that mixed-race people were naturally unstable) and she eventually died by suicide on August 9, 1996. A blow to black folks as a whole, but the one solace was that the work she left behind has been indispensable to Afro-Germans and anti-racism organizations operating in Germany and central Europe. The fact that I could find this person 21 years after her death without ever setting foot into Germany or even speaking German means something. And as this interview shows: https://www.facebook.com/AudreLordeBe... , young people are still being led by her example. Even the United Nations’ Report of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on its mission to Germany used the research of her and her peers when in the country. I’m not sure what else I can say to convince anyone outside of Germany to read this, but I felt it worth every bit of my time. It is always good to know you got family somewhere.


afterword

“alone
i would never have found
my way here
of that i am certain

many have accompanied me
some have even carried me

through love rage and courage
i have grown
can move around freely

show weakness
tears

laughter
can joke around

unlearn mistakes
ignorance

i can
recognize and
cope with
competition and envy

not always
but more often than not

share pain and happiness
without all those
who loyally stand by me
stood by me

on my own
i would never have made it all the way
let alone found my way
here
to you all to me

for critique and patience
optimism and trouble

for everyone
that ever stands by me
stood by me

a million thanks
and a
big

kiss!” – Translated by Ekpenyong Ani.


Appendix: Here are two film trailers and a film excerpt that features May Ayim:
Hope in my Heart Trailer -TWN
AUDRE LORDE - THE BERLIN YEARS/ TRAILER
May Ayim Teil 3 - Last poem recited is Nightsong

[Tuğçe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an important introductory read on Afro-German community in Germany. It is an easy read book but you learn a lot on the history of Black-/Afro Germans. I am glad May Ayim was able to leave her work published in her short-lived life.

[AM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really beautiful poems and powerful insight in what it means to be a black German