May Ayim

May Ayim ( May 3, 1960 in Hamburg, † August 9, 1996 in Berlin; actually Sylvia Brigitte Gertrud Opitz ) was a German poet, educator and activist of Afro-German movement.

Life

The daughter of Ghanaian medical students Emmanuel Ayim and Deutsche Ursula Andler has grown up in the first year and a half in the home and then in the foster family Opitz in Münster (North Rhine- Westphalia), where she attended 1966-1970 Primary School St. Michael and the Peace School. Here she trained as a nurse assistant. Later she studied in Regensburg pedagogy. Her thesis on the history of Afro German 1986 she published the book profess color. The work was rejected by a Berlin professor on the grounds that in Germany there is no racism ". Maybe in the U.S., but not here "

From 1984, she lived in Berlin, where she trained as a speech therapist and worked as a lecturer at several universities. In 1985 she was a founding member of the Initiative of Black and Black German in Germany. You made ​​contact with representatives of the international black women's movement.

She struggled in lectures and also in their poems against racial discrimination. Here she was to their everyday experiences of injustice and stupidity. So she covered in particular the insulting nature of terms such as Negro, Mongrel or crew child. In true colors, she wrote: I grew up with the feeling that was in them having to prove that a ' hybrid ', a ' negro ', a ' foster child ' is a full human being. (P. 207)

It is regarded as one of the pioneers of critical whiteness studies in Germany:

" The Western Christian color symbolism brought the color black has always been to the reprehensible and undesirables in conjunction. Accordingly, can be found in the early literature examples where white people are by wrongful conduct to " Moors ". In the church's vocabulary of the Middle Ages, the terms " Aethiops " and " Aegyptius " were sometimes used as synonyms for the term hell in a striking manner. Religious certain prejudices and discrimination so formed part of the foundation on which in colonial times was easily develop a conglomeration of racist beliefs, which had become subhuman blacks ( Negroes ), the Black Gentiles ( Moors ). "

Having the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis get informed, they despaired. She threw herself on 9 August 1996 from a skyscraper to his death.

The film hope in the heart of Maria Binder of 1997, she portrays. 2004, gave Afrotak TV cyber nomads (in cooperation with the German Section of UNESCO, the House of World Cultures and the power of the night team ) the May Ayim Award, the " first black German International Pan-African literary prize. " On 27 May 2009 decided in Berlin borough Assembly of Friedrichshain- Kreuzberg, the rename after the Brandenburg colonial pioneer Otto Friedrich von der Groeben named Gröbenufer in May- Ayim -Ufer.

Winners of the May- Ayim - Awards

2004: Mario Curvello ( epic ), Olumide Popoola ( poetry), MC Santana (Multimedia )

Works

• Along with Catherine Oguntoye and Dagmar Schultz (Ed.): Color confession. Afro - German women on the traces of its history. Berlin 1986. At that time under the name May Opitz.
• May Ayim: Blues in Black and White, 3rd edition, Berlin, Orlanda women Verlag, 1996, ISBN 3929823233
• May Ayim: Night Song, Berlin, Orlanda women Verlag, 1997, ISBN 392982339X
• May Ayim: Political texts, snapshots and conversations, ISBN 3-929823-45-4
• May Ayim: Borders and outrageous, Fischer, 2002, ISBN 3596151902
• K. Oguntoye, M. Opitz, D. Schultz (ed.): show your colors. Afro - German women on the traces of its history, 2nd edition, Berlin, Orlanda, 1991, ISBN 3-922166-21-0
• May Ayim, Bahman Nirumand, José FA Oliver (ed. ): ... from inside the tongue, 1995, ISBN 3910069568th
• Ika Hügel, Chris Long, May Ayim ( Eds.): Remote connections. Racism, class oppression, Berlin, Orlanda, 1999, ISBN 3922166911th
• May Ayim Award - First International Black German Literature Award 2004 - Piesche, P / Küppers, M / Ani, I / Alagiyawanna - Kadalie, A. ( ed.), Orlanda 3-936937-21-4 | 2004. ..