Mixed Race Studies

May Ayim: A Woman in the Margin of German Society

The Florida State University College of Arts and Scienes
Spring Semester, 2005
76 pages

Margaret MacCarroll, Professor of Modern Languages: German Division
Florida State University

A thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

This work explores the life of the Afro-German writer May Ayim by analyzing her writings as well as by discussing the social circumstances in which she lived. Chapter 1 provides a look at the Ayim’s life, with special emphasis on major factors influencing her childhood. The effects of the personal as well as social pressures that Ayim dealt with as a child and young adult are also discussed. Chapter 2 focuses on the history of Afro-German children born shortly after World War II. Chapter 3 includes an explanation of Minor Literature and an examination of May Ayim as an author of such literature. Her importance as such is established. Due to Ayim’s position outside the mainstream of German society, social factors that greatly affected her life as a result of this situation are discussed in Chapter 4. These factors are: identity, culture, and ethnicity. In Chapter 5 Ayim’s attempts to incorporate both the white and black aspects of herself despite the deeply rooted history of racism in Germany are also discussed. Chapter 6 includes an examination of the toll that Ayim’s familial and social experiences played on her feelings of romantic love, especially toward another Afro-German. Chapter 7 examines the exhaustion that Ayim felt toward the end of her life.

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION

1. GROWING UP BLACK IN GERMANY
    Ayim’s Struggle with “Otherness“
    Childhood Pressure
    The White World and Ayim’s Black Father
    Grasping her Africanness
    Desire for Whiteness even in Africa

2. HISTORY OF RACISM IN GERMANY
    Recent History of Racism and Mischlingskinder after World War II

3. MAY AYIM, AUTHOR OF MINOR LITERATURE
    The Afro-German Minority Represented in Ayim’s Poetry

4. THE IDENTITY, CULTURE AND ETHNICITY OF PEOPLE ON THE FRINGES

5. MINOR RACE IN MAJORITY CULTURE
    Racism on the Global Scale
    Incorporating Her White and Black Self

6. MAY AYIM’S LOVE LIFE

7. AYIM’S EXHAUSTION ON THE FRINGE OF SOCIETY

CONCLUSION
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Read the entire thesis here.

‘Fühlst du dich als Deutsche oder als Afrikanerin?’: May Ayim’s Search for an Afro-German Identity in her Poetry and Essays

German Life and Letters
Volume 59 Issue 4 (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 Ayim was one of the leading voices among Afro-German women and the group’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. 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. 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’s work into the context of the Afro-German experience and highlight issues that were of particular concern to her.

Read or purchase the article here.