Stories and Hopes of the Arrivals to Rhine-Main Archipelago

Leseraum: Blues in Black and White

Blues in Black and White – A Collection of Essays, Poetry, and Conversations by May Ayim, translated and by Anne V. Adams. The English-language edition also includes essays and interviews by and with May Ayim. In the 2020s, the texts were adapted for the stage.

May Ayim (3 May 1960 – 9 August 1996) is the pen name of May Opitz (born Brigitte Sylvia Andler); she was an Afro-German poet, educator, and activist. The child of a German dancer and Ghanaian medical student, she lived with a white German foster family when young. After reconnecting with her father and his family in Ghana, in 1992 she took his surname for a pen name.

Opitz wrote a thesis at the University of Regensburg, "Afro-Deutsche: Ihre Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte auf dem Hintergrund gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen" (Afro-Germans: Their Cultural and Social History on the Background of Social Change), which was the first scholarly study of Afro-German history. It included accounts by many women of Afro-German descent. Ayim worked as an activist to unite Afro-Germans and combat racism in German society. She co-founded Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (Initiative of Black People in Germany) to that purpose in the late 1980s.

Next Nearby Reading Room session will take place on October 3 at 12PM (CET) online.

The discussion will be held in English. Send us an email on de.colonialanguage@gmail.com if you would like to join us.

Over the months, we read and discuss five texts that move through the pluriverse of migrations, exiles, diasporas, displacement, memory, belonging, homelands, (destroyed) environments, embodied knowledge, and sensory memories—with a particular focus on food as a carrier of memory and storytelling.

Reading Schedule

20 June 2026, Ecocide in Ukraine: The Ecological Costs of Russia’s War

25 July 2026, Aral: Untold Stories Before, During, and After the Sea

15 August 2026, Food, Culture, and Cultural Heritage

5 September 2026, Open Veins of Latin America

3 October 2026, Blues in Black and White

The nearby reading is supported and accompanied by: Neseine is a researcher, an artist and an indigenous person engaged in an interdependent relationship with the world. Neseine practices decolonial queerdom and produces texts as well as other artistic works. Born from the spirit of the time, Neseine creates art of various complexity and searches for meaning.