I had May already presented on my old web-log, but since that is broken down, I wanted to have her in focus again and in particular her poem with the celebration of Christ's birth approaching.
During my time at the University of Hamburg, in the early nineties, I was introduced to the forthcoming literature by Afro-American women writers such as Zora Neale Hursten, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. When I learned about the fact that there is one of their 'sisters' living and writing just 'around the corner' I was the more attracted and interested in her life. May Ayim, born Sylvia Brigitte Gertrude Opitz in Hamburg, Germany, was a poet, educator and activist within the Afro-German movement. Since her parents weren't married her father, a Ghanaian medical student, was denied parenthood and her German mother, unfit to raise her, placed her in an orphanage. After a brief stay, she was moved to Münster to live in foster care. Her foster parents raised her with extra parental pressure on being 'good, orderly and mannerly' since May aroused attention in the early 60's as a 'dark-skinned' child. When she fell short of their expectations their punishment was often physical. While May, a very sensitive child, yearned for love and acceptance she was hit with a wooden spoon. After graduation she went to Regensburg to study Psychology and Education and wrote her thesis on Afro-Germans. In 1986, her thesis was published in a book together with the interviews of Black German women concerning their lifes and backgrounds since a lot of Germans still thought it impossible to be both Black & German at the same time (Farbe bekennen / Showing Our Colors, 1986). Furthermore, she was co-founder of the "Initiative of Black People in Germany". When returning from a visit to her paternal family in Ghana, she moved to Berlin, adopted her father's surname Ayim as pen name and published another book with her poems (blues in schwarz weiss, 1995). She became a lecturer at the Freie Universität Berlin and worked as a speech therapist. Nevertheless, her traumatic childhood kept haunting her and in 1996, she had several severe mental and physical breakdowns. When she was additionally diagnosed of Multiple Sclerosis she felt so forlorn that she committed suicide by jumping off a high-rise.
Because I am still very much impressed by the sensitivity of her poems which are delicate observations, I add an additional poem in memory of her (in German though):
exotik
nachdem sie mich erst anschwärzten
zogen sie mich dann durch den kakao
um mir schließlich weiß machen zu wollen
es sei vollkommen unangebracht
schwarz zu sehen
(1985)