May Ayim

May Ayim was born in Hamburg to a German mother and Ghanaian father and, following common practice for mixed-race children born out of wedlock in Germany at the time, was raised by a white German foster family, growing up largely isolated from other Black Germans and with little language or framework to understand her own identity and experiences of racism.

As a young adult, Ayim studied psychology and education, and became involved with a small but growing community of Afro-German women organising around questions of race, identity, and belonging in a country that had rarely acknowledged its own Black population or history. In 1986, she co-founded the Initiative of Black People in Germany (ISD) and, alongside Katharina Oguntoye and American poet Audre Lorde, co-edited the landmark 1986 anthology Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out, the first published work to use and popularise the term "Afro-German," giving language and visibility to an entire community's experience for the first time.

Ayim's poetry, collected in volumes including blues in schwarz weiss, explored themes of racism, identity, belonging, and resistance with a distinctive and influential voice in German literature. She struggled for years with the compounded effects of racism and mental health challenges within German society, and died in Berlin in 1996 after taking her own life. Her contributions to Afro-German literature and activism are commemorated today through the annual May Ayim Award, Germany's first prize dedicated to literature by Black German and German writers of colour.