Marked with the seal of indocility and melancholy, the poetry of the Afro-German May Ayim enchanted the American Audre Lorde and the Frenchwoman Maryse Condé. “Blues in black and white” is the first collection of poems by the poet, who died early. It is now available in French.
It is a book to the midnight blue blanket. With the name of the author and the title in white and purple letters, engraved on the page: black and white blues, by May Ayim. It is indeed a life in black and white, exposed to contempt and racism on a daily basis, told by the fifty or so poems in free verse that make up the collection, in an often ironic and combative tone, but always in a sensitive writing. and bright.
The volume is bilingual, the original text in German appearing on the left, and on the right page, the translation into the language of Rimbaud and Aragon. It should no doubt have been said in the language of Maryse Condesince it was she who wrote the preface to the anthology, where the West Indian novelist looks back on her first meeting with the young May Ayim, in Berlin, in the 1990s and her discovery of this poetic voice like no other: ” A voicewrites the preface, whose stamp bore the traces of very old wounds, still open. His presence too gently painful, like her voice. »
The following extract makes the voice of the poet heard: ” I will / be / all the same / African / even if you / me / prefer / German / and will be all the same / German / even if / my blackness / does not suit you / I will take / one more step further / until the last margin / where my sisters are / where my brothers stand / where / our / freedom / begins… »
To be or not to be African
These verses taken from blues in black and blue are representative of the intractable and captivating writing of the poetess. To be or not to be African, without forgetting to be German, that is the question. An essential personal dilemma that feeds the poetry of May Ayim. It is a poetry that is both autobiographical and that wants to be the standard bearer for the new generation of Afro-descendants seeking to find their place in a society that minimizes them, marginalizes them because of the color of their skin.
In his preface to black and white blues by May Ayim, Maryse Condé evokes the movement of negritude, comparing the assertive poetry of the Afro-German to that of Leon Gontran Damas, traveling companion of Senghor and Aimé Césaire. ” His indocility, his humor, his poetic expression are also those of a Léon-Gontran Damas, one of the fathers of negritude “, writes the author of Segou.
Almost a century separates May Ayim from the generation of French Negritude poets. From an African father and a German mother, Ayim was born in Hamburg on May 3, 1960. She had an unhappy childhood, torn between abandonment and misunderstanding, as the translator Lucie Lamy recalls: “Her father is Ghanaian and when she was born he was in Germany for a temporary stay. He is there to study medicine and his mother, she is a dancer. She does not want to keep this child. They abandon him. As much as her father will seek to have contact with her, even when she is a child, in her foster family, her mother has refused any contact. »
The abandonment by his mother was undoubtedly the greatest tragedy of Ayim’s life. Entrusted to a foster family at the age of 18 months, she did not really know her mother, who never responded to her daughter’s calls for help. On the other hand, May Ayim always stayed in contact with her father, whom she called “Uncle Emmanuel” when he came from his distant Ghana to visit her. As an adult, the young poet will go to Ghana, then to Kenya where the father had settled. The future poetess wanted to capture her African spiritual and cultural heritage, her mythologies in particular, traces of which can be found in the poems of the Berliner, as well as the “adinkra” (1) motifs that punctuate the pages of the black and white blues.
Based in Berlin from the 1980s, it is mainly through writing and her political activism in favor of causes ranging from feminism to that of migrants, through the question of black diasporic identity, that the writer made himself known. Her encounter with other intellectual women engaged in the fight against racial and sexual discrimination, such as the African-American poet Audre Lorde, was decisive in her poetic and political awareness.
His test book Farbe Bekennen, bringing together reflections, poetry, testimonies of women, adapted from a dissertation at the end of university studies devoted to the history of the African diaspora in Germany, has established itself as a major work on the black condition. It stems as much from anthropology, sociology as from militant literature. He popularizes the term “Afro-German” to designate Germans of African origin. A descriptive term, neutral, without moral or exotic connotation, as could be the designation “mulatto”, for example.
“Miraculous Weapons”
It is undoubtedly through poetry, which she has been writing since the 1980s and which she stages in the context of literary festivals and meetings, that May Ayim has given the true measure of her talent as a writer. As Jean-Philippe Rossignol, translator of May Ayim, recalls, she wrote his first poem at 18; his name is Jerusalem. “His work will be mixed all the time between activism for the recognition of black individuals in Germany after the reunification of East Germany and West Germany. And another side is the activity of writing, poetic writing. She will always lead the two front, both activism, militancy and at the same time, she does poetry festivals. She writes, she publishes ‘blues in black and white’ and she wanted more and more to be recognized as a poetess. »
Author of two collections of poems, black and white bluespublished in 1995 in Germany and translated into French in 2022, as well as a posthumous collection nachtgesang (“Night Song”), currently being translated, May Ayim believed in the subversive power of poetic speech. ” My pen is mightier than my sword “, she liked to repeat, recalling the theme of” miraculous weapons “, dear to Aimé Césaire.
It is committed poetry, which dissects prejudices, questions the structures of thought inherited from the long history of imperialism and daily domination. The themes of black and white blues range from identity affirmation to the turbulence of love, through questions relating to difference, communitarianism, racism and the marginalization of Afro-descendants in Western national narratives. Political and social activism, which is the basis of the poet’s words here, is coupled with a quest for economy of means and efficiency. May Ayim’s models can be found in English-speaking Caribbean (Johnson) and American (Audrey Lorde) poetry, including the author of black and white blues was, according to her excellent translators Lucie Lamy and Jean-Philippe Rossignol, a tireless reader. It is an emancipatory word, that of May Ayim, between marginality and flashes.
Long marginalized, German-African poetry is now part of the German literary canon. ” We can use the word “marginal”, even if it wanted to move the representations of centrality and marginality. She had an association called Literatur fraulein (women of literature) in which she tried, together with other women, to make the voices of literature written by women, and in particular immigrant or black women, heard, which precisely marginalized those of German society. I think that, precisely because it’s a marginal voice, it particularly appealed to us or that we wanted to approach it. Finally, marginal, it still has a real echo in Germany today. Nor is it literature that is confidential. His fights remained, his poetry too. And May Ayim died very young in 1996. And so, she didn’t have time to see this evolution. »
Suffering from serious psychiatric problems and multiple sclerosis which did not bode well, May Ayim killed herself on August 9, 1996 by jumping from the fourteenth floor of the building where she lived. She was just 36 years old.
► blues in black and white, by May Ayim. Translated from English by Lucie Lamy and Jean-Philippe Rossignol. Ypsilon editions. 2022, 253 pages, 22 euros.