A READING IN THE POETRY OF THE AFRO-GERMAN MAY AYIM FROM DUAL INHERITANCE THEORY PERSPECTIVE: THE IMPACT OF AUDRE LORDE ON MAY A

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International Journal of Arts & Sciences,

CD-ROM. ISSN: 1944-6934 :: 09(03):27–52 (2016)

A READING IN THE POETRY OF THE AFRO-GERMAN MAY AYIM

FROM DUAL INHERITANCE THEORY PERSPECTIVE: THE IMPACT

OF AUDRE LORDE ON MAY AYIM

Yasser K. R. Aman

Minia University, Egypt

Dual Inheritance Theory (DIT) asserts that both genetic and environmental factors have a formative

impact on the physical as well as psychological upbringing of people. Audre Lorde, a famous Afro-

American poet and a model (according to DIT) has influenced Afro-German women writers. For the

forging of a collective Black German consciousness of identity, Audre Lorde’s connections with Black

Germans were pivotal and marked the beginning of a cross-cultural movement that was seminal for the

building of various organizations like the Initiative of Black Germans (ISD), ADEFRA (Afro-German

Women) and Home story Deutschland. This paper argues that Afro-Germans, and Afro-Americans,

who share much in common, are part and parcel of the environment they have been raised in; therefore,

according to genetic-cultural coevolution, subsequent generations are fully developed Homo sapiens

whose biological and cultural genes are every inch (Afro-)Germans (and (Afro-)Americans). Moreover,

the paper argues that a model, Audre Lorde in this case, who shares genetic roots with others, such as

May Opitz, alias May Ayim—a palindrome that underscores her fascination of word play—, and who

lives somewhere else can transfer some of his/her environmental practices such as protest against

racism and give voice to the marginalized. Analysis and comparison of some poems by Lorde and Ayim

will prove the DIT model’s influence on others.

Keywords: Dual Inheritance Theory, Audre Lorde, May Ayim, Afro- German literature.

Dual Inheritance Theory

The study of genetic information and its modes of operation and transmission along with socio-cultural

systems stresses the formative impact of the two different kinds of constructions (environmental and

biological) necessary for creating fully cultured human societies with human beings that can reflect the

material out of which these societies are constructed (See: Paul 2-3). Transmission of cultural practices

and models resembles DNA's: “[W]hereas culture is transmitted by way of sensory perception, DNA is

transmitted by means of copulation. This basic difference turns out to have enormous consequences for

how the two channels influence the organization of human socio-cultural system” (Paul 11). Moreover,

and in terms of promoting pro-social behavior such as gratitude, “it can be said that biology and culture

colluded and constituted a powerful “dual-force” that was likely to have activated a stream of serial

reciprocity” (Machalek and Martin 23).

The impact of cultural models in transmitting Afro-Americans’ and Afro-Germans’ reactions against

racism is proven through an investigation of cultural coevolution of genetically psychological

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A Reading in the Poetry of the Afro-German May Ayim From Dual ...

predispositions and cognitive structures which host modes of expressions. There is a genotypic-

phenotypic relations between ideas and modes of expressions ( (Boyd and Richerson 4

; Stone &

Lurquin 130). Therefore, culturalgens are basic to human development (Laland and Brown 243).

There is a difference between the structure of cultural inheritance and that of genetic inheritance

(Aman 4). First, “the cultural mating system differs from its genetic analog.” The enculturation process

may be carried out by “cultural parents” or “models” more effectively than by genetic parents. (In the

case of Afro-German women writers, Audre Lorde has had a formative influence and really fulfill the role

of “cultural parents” and “models”.)Therefore, very different evolutionary effects are expected with the

increasing number of cultural parents. Second, “the cultural generation length is variable.” It may be

shorter or longer than biological generation. (The cultural implications of the communications of Lorde

and Afro-German women writers such as Ayim have outlived both Lorde and Ayim.)Third, “individuals

are at least partly developed when they are enculturated.” (The more Afro-Germans’ culture is rightly

expressed by decoding cultural kernels, the better they are enculturated.) Cultural transmission starts at

birth and continues throughout life. Fourth, “culture is acquired by directly copying the phenotype.”

Unlike genetic information, which is not affected by life events, the events of an individual’s life affect

the cultural information acquired by him/her which is transmitted to his/her cultural offspring. (That’s

why the new environment under slavery, and later on under the Third Reich and up till now, has had a

strong impact on the cultural as well as genetic evolution of the slaves and the occupation children known

as Afro-Germans fairly recently). First, they acquired new nomenclatures such slaves, War babies, brown

babies Rhineland Bastards, Mischling and Afro-Germans. Second, the genotypic as well as phenotypic

traits of their offspring were affected by the new environment. Third, a new kind of offspring, viz., the

mulattos, illustrate cultural-genetic coevolution and have coined up surnames which breached the

strictness of transmission (See: Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 255-59). Strictness-breach evolution applies

well to jazz

and blues since they have been developed by GIs, fathers of occupation children, whose

offspring has often been mulattoes.

Jazz played a cultural role and was an instrumental mode of expression, “the debate about jazz,

whether in the United States or Germany was a debate about inclusion, democracy, freedom, and race”

(Lusane 196). The Nazi leaders banned jazz dance, particularly from 1939 to 1940, and categorized as

“black and Jewish” (Lusane 202). Although Nazi leaders opposed jazz, it remained popular and Lindy

Hop was the most favorite dance by German jazzers. Learning culture through a mode of expression such

as jazz and its cultural models may differentiate substantially between genetic and cultural inheritance

(See: Durham 5). In fact “dancing was a functional means of cultural identity and release from the

growing deprivations and consequences of the war” (Lusane 204).

The Other has long been misguided by the stereotypical images of the blacks which white Americans

and white Germans have fabricated; thus leading to random variation in the Other’s cultural conceptions.

However, random variation occurred in the Afro-Americans’ and Afro-Germans’ cultural misconceptions

of themselves as inferior to the white. On the other hand, the black-white intercultural relations

sometimes have led to guided variation where black people learned and transmitted cultural variants seen

appropriate and useful to them such as African symbols and Jazz and blues.

In the early twentieth century, some biologists advocated the idea that genes have been affected by

cultural transmission. They

claimed that environmental conditions might affect the organism – in particular, the

gonad of the F1 generation (i.e., parents). The developing gonad, with its affected

1 For more on evolutionary process see Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson J. Culture and the Evolutionary Process.

University Of Chicago Press, 1988.Print.

2 For more on the evolution of Jazz and Blues see Yasser K. R. Aman. The Evolution of Jazz and Blues as Cultural

Kernels: Expressing Racial Iniquity in Komunyakaa’s Copacetic. Saarbr�cken: LAP LAMBERT Academic

Publishing, 2010. Print. The book was published on academia and can be easily accessed on

https://www.academia.edu/246735/The_Evolution_of_Jazz_and_Blues_as_Cultural_Kernels_Expressing_Racial_In

iquity_in_Komunyakaa_s_Copacetic

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Yasser K. R. Aman

protoplasm, develops into a new individual of the F2 generation (i.e., offspring), carrying

changed soma. New metabolic substances in the F1 organism are passed on to the

organism of the newly developing individual, which consequently shows the same

variation as the parent, albeit removed from the inducing environment in question. These

substances might be of such a nature as to stimulate the formation of antibodies, thus

causing a reaction in a later generation. (Sch�npflug, “Theory and Research in Cultural

Transmission: A Short History”10)

Between Afro-Americans and Afro-Germans are solid common grounds since they share almost the

same genetic history and, necessarily, show common behavioral responses. To the same effect, Krumov

and Larson maintain that “we share with all peoples a common genetic heritage, and share with many

cultures a more recent ancestor and a common geographic journey. These common human factors led to

deep structured universal behavioral responses that all peoples in the world would recognize as human”

(2). Transmission of Afro-American cultural models, Audre Lorde in this case, is based on “shared

cultural beliefs”, and cultural practices (in this case voicing female protest) is transmitted through “the

apprenticeship model” and “guided participation” (Trommsdorff 138).

Seen as a cultural model/mother, as well as a feminist fellow, Audre Lorde has vertically,

horizontally and obliquely transmitted black American feminist cultural practices of protest, different

attitudes towards racial issues, social mobility and even altruistic behavior to black Germans specially

Ayim. “With Lorde’s promoting, Afro-Germans began to examine their history” (Michaels, “The Impact

of Audre Lorde’s Politics and Poetics on Afro-German Women Writers” 26). Therefore, Ayim was

encouraged to search Afro-German history thus preparing for her M.A. thesis. Though black Americans

and black Germans live in the same geomental community, sharing the first part of an identity,

differences in their physical environment make cultural transmission and adaptation easier (Sch�npflug,

“Introduction to Cultural Transmission: Psychological, Developmental, Social, and Methodological

Aspects” 4-5).

In fact, Audre Lorde, a cultural model, provides Afro-Germans with a culturegen which reflects

“cultural mental representation or cultural schemata”. Afro-Germans, represented by Ayim and others,

chose and adopted Lorde’s culturegens:

The rates at which individuals adopt alternative culturegens are determined by the

product of the innate (i.e., genetic) bias function and an update assimilation (e.g., copy

others) bias function. Lumsden and Wilson attach importance to an “exponential trend

watcher” model, which refers to a simple regularity: As more people adopt one

culturegen, the probability of others switching to it increases exponentially. If people

are strongly inclined to follow what others around them are doing, then small initial

differences in switching propensity can be dramatically magnified at the level of the

group (Sch�npflug, “Introduction to Cultural Transmission” 15).

Moreover, Lorde represents “prestige-biased oblique transmission” (Sch�npflug, “Introduction to Cultural

Transmission”18) since she is a famous literary figure and a cultural leader.

Ayim followed the example of Lorde whose political and poetical impact is evident in the former’s

poetry:

In her poetry, Ayim took over many aspects of Lorde’s poetics. Like Lorde, she spoke

out against racism and the inhumanity of society and called for a worldwide community

of people of color, and she connected to African-American and African traditions and

myths. (Michaels, “The Impact of Audre Lorde’s Politics and Poetics on Afro-German

Women Writers” 32)

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Although Afro-German writers have not relied to African heritage, Ayim, following Lorde’s model, was

an exception. She made use of her African heritage in many of her poems especially those in which

Ghana is alluded to.

When all is said, essential elements of cultural transmission process are to be kept in mind while

carrying any empirical study:

the transmitter, the transmittee, the variety of contents of transmission, the selectivity

concerning the type of content, the developmentally motivated, or situationally

determined receptivity of the transmittee to type of contents, type of transmitter, and

motivation to transmit at various stages of the life span, the (dis)continuous social

context, and the support from the social environment for one’s own views. (Sch�npflug,

“Epilogue: Toward a Model of Cultural Transmission” 468)

The role of emotion in transmission process has opened up a new ground for further research. Therefore,

poetry, a specimen of human modes of literary and artistic expressions, is chosen to be the corpus of this

study.

Black German History

Before one starts discussing the history of racism and the situation of Afro-Germans in Germany, one

must put in mind that: “race is neither an essence nor a scientific fact of biology. Individuals are not born

“raced” but rather become raced subjects through complex social processes of constructing meaning”

(Campt, The Other Germans 91). The number of Black Germans who live in Germany nowadays ranges

from 300000 to 500000. The relationship between Germany and Africa may be traced back to 1600 when

German traders brought Africans who worked as servants or laborers. It was recorded that the first

Africans who graduated from a German University was Anton Wilhelm Amo, later a professor of

philosophy. “One of the first Africans known to have lived in Germany was Anton Wilhelm Amo (1703-

1759)” (Flippo). He was born in Ghana and came to Germany only to build a career as a professor.

Strangely enough, he returned to Africa. “Most accounts claim the reason for his return to his native

Africa was the racial discrimination he encountered in Germany. Then as now, Africans in Europe were

seen as something exotic and foreign” (Flippo).

On the other hand German immigrants, especially those who settled in Charleston, South Carolina,

had relationships with Afro-Americans. In “German Immigrants and Afro-American in Charleston, South

Carolina, 1850-1880”, Jeffery Strickland maintains that:

Antebellum Charleston was the prototypical Deep South city, and it served as the

financial, political, and intellectual center of South Carolina’s slave society. White

supremacy prevailed in a caste system that oppressed African-American, and nearly all

white southerners aspired to slaveholding. It appears that most Germans did not aspire to

own slaves, and this affected their status in southern society. (37)

Besides, Afro-American and German immigrants did business “at a time when white southerners would

rarely do so” (Strickland 38); an attempt for which German traders suffered a lot.

Germans and Afro-Americans developed good social relations so much that they had intermarriage

relations and lived as families. Moreover, “in the 1880 census, sixteen blacks and fifteen mulattos

identified a German mother and seventeen blacks and twenty-nine mulattos identified a German father”

(Strickland 41) However, politically speaking, “the Germans had achieved rapid upward mobility at the

expense of African Americans” (Strickland 43) because the “Democratic Party of Charleston nominated

an all-white ticket, and included a German immigrant” (Strickland 43). Furthermore, Germans were

accused of buying “Irish votes” (Strickland 44). As black Americans and white republicans were

considered one political target, Germans became aware that “public support for the Republican Party

would hurt their social standing and whites would boycott their business” (Strickland 45). Worse still, a

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riot erupted before municipal elections in 1871; thus creating a real conflict between Germans and Afro-

Americans.

“The Berlin Conference of 1884 allowed Germany to participate in the European colonization of

Africa and it eventually established African colonies in Cameroon, Togo, Tanzania, Burundi, Namibia,

parts of Botswana, Kenya and Mozambique” (Flippo). German few African colonies were the source of

Africans who went to live in Germany. However, in 1904, Germans committed a mass genocide, a

massacre of three quarters of Hereros who lived in Namibia. “It took Germany a full century to issue a

formal apology to the Hereros (in 2004) for that atrocity, which was provoked by a German

“extermination order” (Flippo).

World War I ended German colonization leaving behind occupying black soldiers whose copulation

with German women resulted in what was known as “Rhineland Bastards” (Flippo). (Similarly, World

War II came with occupying African-American Soldiers who left behind what was known as “the brown

baby”). Sometimes “children of German women and black GIs in Germany were called “occupation

children” (Besatzungskinder)-or worse. Mischlingskind (“half-breed/mongrel child”) was one of the least

offensive terms used in the 1950s and ‘60s” (Flippo). Moreover, “these children were seen as a threat to

the health of the German body politic” (Campt, “Afro-Germans”: The Convergence of Race, Sexuality

and Gender in the Formation of A German Ethnic Identity 1919-1960 56).

The term Mischling, in fact, survived the Third Reich and persisted well in the 1960s in

official, scholarly, media, and public usage in West Germany. But its content after 1945

had changed. It was no longer used to refer to the progeny of so-called mixed unions

between Jews andn on-Jewish Germans. Rather, immediately after the war it came to

connote the offspring of white German women and foreign men of color, as it had done

prior to the mid-1930s. (Fehrenbach, “Afro-German Children and the Social Politics of

Race after 1945” 226) This may refer to W. E. B. DuBois’ double consciousness, a dual

identity that lies between German and black ones (Campt, “Afro-Germans” 235-237).

Actually, there are different categories of Afro-Germans. “German-born blacks are sometimes called

“Afrodeutsche”… These category includes people of African heritage born in Germany… blacks born in

Germany are not German citizens unless they have at least one German parent” (Flippo). However this

was modified by a naturalization law passed in 2000 which allowed those living in Germany for three to

eight years to apply for citizenship.

In fact, after World War II, children of mixed blood emerged as a serious problem in Germany so

much that many studies were to be conducted and surveys were undertaken. Gradually, other minorities,

such as Jewish, Slavic, and Asiatic, were not so much focused on, and, eventually, were replaced in the

German consciousness by blackness (Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler: Black Occupation Children in

Postwar Germany and America 78). Since US soldiers fathered almost nearly 80% of occupation

children, this problem was seen as an American one (Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler 79). The one-body

concept reached by anthropologist Eugen Fischer which asserts that race crossing yielded “combined

racial traits in one body” (Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler 80) does not lead , as Fischer concluded, to the

possibility that German race would not improve. For this reason and the like, most colored children

unjustly underwent sterilization during the first four decades of the 20th century. Kirchner and Sieg

continued their work on mixed blood children after World War II, focusing on children with African-

American paternity. Be it noted that “although Kirchner initially asserted the importance of weighing the

role of individual traits in examining the children, his conclusions centered around identifying instances

of racially based inheritance” (Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler 90).

The concept of race was sometimes used to secure power through hereditary. For example, Arthur

Count de Gobineau (1816-1882) explained race differences biologically justifying “any inequality in the

cultural, social, and political sphere” (Opitz 10). Characteristics of biological inferiority clung to the half-

breed children as closely as Nessus shirt did to Hercules’ back. “For example, a newspaper report in

Germania in September 1920 carried the statement that it was a well-known fact that “half-breed”

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children would inherit the defects of both parents” (Opitz 48). Calls for sterilizing colored children were

louder and sterilizations have been carried out for “eugenic reasons” (Opitz 48). Claims for the necessity

for forced sterilization, by Dr. Hans Macco and others, were widespread. These claims were justified as

““inferior genetic inheritance” could be weeded out and the master race consciously bred by means of

rigorous state intervention in matters of birth control, marriage laws, and sterilization” (Opitz 50). Dr. W

Abel contributed to the severe sterilization of Afro-Germans as he raised a scientific claim that Afro-

Germans were inferior. This resulted in “hundred mandatory sterilizations of Afro-Germans” (Opitz 52)

by 1937.

Although Kant, Darwin, Haeckel, Oscar Peschel and others supported inequality-based biological

difference, their beliefs were proved to be false: “Science has recently discovered that 01% of our genes

determine our appearance” (MacCarroll 19). This fact is supported by different scientific articles such as

Natalie Angier’s “Do Races Differ? Not Really, DNA Shows” and Charles Petit’s “No Biological Basis

for Race, Scientists Say Distinctions Prove to be Skin Deep” (MacCarroll 20).

Afro-German children were exploited and shown in movies as exotic; an example is Elfie Fiegrate, a

colored child who starred as Toxi in “Toxi” and as Mony in “The Dark Star”. The “Toxi” movie discusses

the fate of an Afro-German child who was left at the door of a white family. Some see her as a problem,

others sympathize with her since she is a helpless child. The theme song in the movie is nostalgic and

touches upon the idea of belonging and the dream of home. The film ends with the problem of race

unsolved (Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler 107-24). The same problems of race recurred in “The Dark Star”

(Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler 125-29).

Ethel Butler of Chicago went to Germany in order to adopt Afro-German children, a journey

heralded by newspapers as a mission of “mercy” (Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler 132-35). Germans

refused adoption because of negative biological inheritances. White Americas interested in adoption

highlighted the possibility of positive environmental impact which can lead to child improvement

(Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler 137). After a lot of discussions and law amendments, it seemed that

neither West Germans nor U.S. officials “were eager to claim responsibilities for the children and the

social problem they were perceived to embody” (Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler 142). Individual efforts

were exerted to adopt colored children. An example is Mabel Grammer who, and her husband, adopted

“eleven German children” (Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler 148). Moreover, “she doubtless arranged well

over a thousand adoptions all told” (Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler 148). However, she was depicted as a

negative example of risking children’s future (Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler 151).

Afro-Americans in Germany

The free-of- Jim-Crow ambience in Germany had influenced Afro-American soldiers so much that their

“experiences in postwar and Cold War West Germany thus proved pivotal in the struggle against racial

discrimination in America” (H�n and Klimke 1). America’s contradictory attitudes of leading the free

world and at the same time hosting institutionalized racism was targeted by “the Soviet and Eastern

German propagandists” (H�n and Klimke 2). What worsened matters, Jim Crow segregations were

carried out in German communities. “The failure of African-American units thus were attributed to the

African-Americans, and in the cases where black units achieved successes, credit went to the white

officers leading them” (Schroer 47). However, “in May 1946, for the first time a majority of white

Americans polled agreed that “Negroes are as intelligent as white people”“ (Schroer 71). 1964 showed

examples of the American government’s handling of the problem of racism producing “The President’s

Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces, Final Report: Military Personnel Stationed

Overseas” (H�n and Klimke 3). One of the most important examples of collaboration between GIs and

civilians in fighting for racial equality was “the “Call for Justice” meeting held on July 4, 1971, in the

auditorium of Heidelberg University” (H�n and Klimke 3). Furthermore “[T]he East German government

hailed civil rights activists as the heroes of the “other America–the America of the oppressed” (H�n and

Klimke 4). Collaboration and support were extended to include third world countries. In “Political

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Aspects of Afro-German Relations” Uwe Holtz, member of the Federal German Parliament and Chairman

of the Parliamentary Committee for Economic Cooperation, maintains that “the Party Congress of the

Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) held in Hanover1973adopted the following resolution: “The

SPD stands side by side with the peoples of the Third World in their struggle against colonization and

racism” (H�n and Klimke 38).

The U.S. government was indirectly condemned of following a self-contradictory policy. While the

U.S. government was instructing Germans into how to follow a democratic way of life, viz., the American

one, the same government was practicing racism against black soldiers living in Germany. In fact, “the

U.S. military had taken Jim Crow racism to the very country the United States has committed to

educating toward a democratic way of life” (H�n and Klimke 54). Mistreatment of black soldiers was

similar to that of Jews at the hands of the Nazis. In 1964 Martin Luther King Jr. visited Germany to

spread nonviolence resistance. After his visit to both West and East Germanys, “he compared Berlin’s

Wall with the walls of segregation in the United States” (H�n and Klimke 105). However, the fact

remains that segregated Germanys supported the Black struggle. East Germany’s alliance with Black

power was a government supported one, while West Germany’s alliance reflected a real desire of students

and intellectuals to identify with Black power. “Although the campaigns had unique agendas of their own,

both of them, along with their domestic repercussions, are thus an integral part of the global dimension of

the African American journey of equality and freedom” ((H�n and Klimke 141).

Practice of the must-be-equality-based concepts such as nativity, identity and nationality is a real

challenge:

The challenge for contemporary white Germans- and for contemporary historians of

white Germany—is to find a way to re-conceptualize the nation and its narratives to

include the existence and its experiences of its minorities, not on the basis of “difference”

but as Germans and equals. (Fehrenbach, “Afro-German Children and the Social Politics

of Race after 1945” 245)

On the academic level Afro-American studies were recognized as a distinct discipline after World

War II, with Charles Nicholas as director of John F. Kennedy Institute in Belin in 1959. The 1960s

witnessed considerable flourish in black studies so much so by “the late 1960s, an average of five courses

in African American studies were annually taught at West German universities” (Boesenberg 220).

However, Afro-American research stopped at John F. Kennedy Institute when Nicholas left Berlin in

1969. Notwithstanding “the fertile political climate of the 1960s and the expansion of the West German

universities in the 1970s represented a productive context for the emergence of African American studies”

(Boesenberg 221). German academics have profited from productive context:

In their current studies of African/American/German encounters, German academics are

profiting from the groundbreaking work of Afro-German scholar-activities such as May

Ayim, Ika H�gel-Marshall, and Katharina Oguntoye, as well as the publications of

African-American specialists on German history and culture likeTina Campt and

Michelle M. Wright. (Boesenberg 227)

Showing Our Colors, a seminal text basic to all Afro-German movements, was considered an important

step in building resistance:

a pivotal unifying and clarifying moment in the growing discursive movement for a black

identity was the 1984 publication of Farbe Bekennen (Showing Our Colors). This

book…was the first extended work on black German history. It not only represented the

insurgent voices of thirteen Afro-German women but expressed the incipient construction

of an Afro-German identity and desire for community...The book and two of its authors,

May Opitz and Katharina Oguntoye, helped to found and develop two important

organizations in the wake of Farbe Bekennen. (Lusane 260)

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May Ayim is considered an important figure in Afro-German Literature, the loss of who is great:

Opitz was a leading intellectual and organizer for the movement. Her poetry and

tenacious spirit mobilized Afro-German energy and helped to instill the sense of black

identity and black woman identity necessary to advance toward building a black

community. In addition to her writing, she was politically active and helped to create

Black History Month in Germany, beginning in 1990 and still going strong. The

community suffered a great loss, however, when she committed suicide on 9 August

1996 at the age of thirty-six. (Lusane 260-61)

Audre Lorde’s Influence on May Ayim

A famous Ghanaian-German poet, May Ayim (1960-1996) has remained almost unknown to almost all

Germans. However, after she had exerted efforts in letting herself be known to all as Afro-German, “ a

street in Berlin-Kreuzberg, formerly named after a German colonialist, was renamed in her honor as

May-Ayim-Ufer, in 2011” (Gerlind). Because her work is a mixture of anti-racism and cultural diversity,

it deserves to be brought to a global level. “Her first collection of poetry, blues in schwarz weiss (Blues in

Black and White), was published in 1995 and her second, nachtgesang (night song), in 1997, with poems

she had left behind. A translation of some of her poems, essays, and conversations, entitled Blues in Black

and White, was published in the United States in 2003” (Gerlind). Her poetry is different because her

language can be understood by people from different walks of life.

In night song, Ayim presents paintings in the form of poems. “Her poems were often dialogues,

sometimes with white Germans whom she mirrored and gently critiqued. For example, in her poem “afro-

deutsch I,” she mocked the everyday racism she encounters” (Gerlind). In her speech “May Ayim Teil1”

she recites “afro-deutsch” and comments on this giving a briefing on her background. May Ayim’s poems

“afro-german I” and “afro-german II” feature a conversation between a white German and an Afro

German, which highlights annihilation of Afro-German identity. The poems stress continuous misreading

and redefinition of Afro-Germans as Africans. In the first lines of “afro-deutsch I,” the white German

comments:

Sie sind afro-deutsch?

…ah, ich verstehe: afrikanisch und deutsch.

Ist ja ‘ne interessante Mischung!

(You Are Afro-German?

…ah, I understand: African and German.

There’s an interesting mix!). (See: Wright192 )

These lines reflect the way White Germans see Afro-Germans, a mix, a freak of nature. “Afro-

Germans are viewed and treated as foreigners because they do not look “German” in the eyes of White

German compatriots” (PoikƗne-Daumk

49 ). Mistreatment of ethnic groups causes confusion among

ethnic young people who wish to be part and parcel of the land they live on but are Othered by native

people (See: Padilla 191-192).

In “afro-german I” she draws on her autobiography since her personal experience is intertwined with

all Afro-Germans’:

That’s so sad… Listen, if you ask me:

A person’s origin, see, really leaves quite a

Mark.

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Take me, I’m from Westphalia,

and I feel

that’s where I belong…

Oh boy! All the misery there is in the world!

Be glad

You didn’t stay in the bush.

You wouldn’t be where you are today! (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 14)

In “May Ayim Teil 2”, she talks about the mulatto theme in “afro-german I”. The poem shows

African-American cultural models’ influence other than Lorde. B.T. Washingston’s philosophy of

betterment of the self, which was expressed in his book Up From Slavery, and Langston Hughes’ self-

acceptance, approach which is evident in his poetry, are reflected in the following lines:

I mean, you’re really an intelligent girl, you

know.

If you work hard at your studies,

you can help your people in Africa, see:

That’s

What you’re predestined to do,

I’m sure they’ll listen to you,

while people Iike us –

there’s such a difference in cultural levels…

What do you mean, do something here? What

On earth would you want to do here?

Okay, okay, so it’s not all sunshine and roses.

But I think everybody should put their own

house in order first! (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 14-15)

She criticizes both racist opinions of colored people and colored people’s beliefs that they are predestined

to be looked down upon. She defies the stereotypical image of black people, not in Germany but,

everywhere by calling for the betterment of the self, a call first made by Washington and later adopted by

Hughes in his poetry and prose. Unlike many black poets who wanted to pass from Black into White such

as Countee Cullen, she like Hughes, is proud of her blackness and defends it using the language of the

racist. However, in “afro-german II” she criticized German history: “German history isn’t something one/

Can really be proud of, is it. / And you’not that black anyway, you know” (Ayim, Blues in Black and

White 16-17). “She loved her mother tongue, as biased and hostile as it is toward People of Color. She

masterfully turned the tables, swung her pen as a sword, her humor as a shield, weighed every letter of the

alphabet carefully, decided when to mold or discard it” (Gerlind).

Ayim’s “darkness” discusses parents’ union and separation after having a child. It is based on the

biblical allusion to a line in John 1:1(King James Version): “In the beginning was the Word, and the

Word was with God, and the Word was God”. She equates darkness to the word of God:

in the beginning there was

gentle darkness and

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nervous silence

then it became very noisy

very bright. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 43)

She parallels the eve and secret of creation, where darkness comes first then brightness follows, to the

beginning of a family: “a mo/a fa/a chi” (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 44). This biological union fell

apart after it had resulted in birth of the child/the protagonist/the poet:

the child stayed

alone most of the time

the first word

was just a word

MAMA. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 44)

The child's/poet's world ends up in loneliness because she is Afro-German. She even does not feel the

care of God since the word was just a word: her mama's. Her creation starts with a physical union where

genetic evolution takes place and later on cultural-genetic co-evolutionary forces change her situation in

the world. The beginning disappears with her newly acquired disparaging identity, an oft-portrayed image

in literature. The song of Ten Little Negros depicts a stereotypical image of black people (Opitz 128). The

same image recurs in “Negro Revolt in Cuba” (Opitz 129). “The Little Moor and the Gold Princess”, a

story by Richard von Volkmann-lean-Leander portrays a negative image of an ugly Negro (Opitz 130).

The impact of Lorde shows itself clearly in “soul sister” in which Ayim laments the death of her

cultural model/sister:

we mourn the death of a great black poet

a sister and friend and comrade in struggle

her impact lives on

in her works

our visions

carry the experience

of her words. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 135)

The above lines, quoted from Ayim’s poem “soul sister”, mourn Audre Lorde who has had a formative

impact on Afro Germans since she encouraged and supported Black German women to organize. Though

she recognized the duplicity of life and culture Afro-Germans suffer from as they are hyphenated, Lorde

recognized that Afro-Americans and Afro Germans had much in common. She advocated interaction and

mutual relations between Afro-Americans and Afro-Germans:

Afro-Europeans are distinct minorities. We, as African-Americans, need to recognize

that, and make contacts with our brothers and sisters in Europe. … We need to do this as

people in the African Diaspora, and we need to know this as the “hyphenated people”

upon whom, I believe, hope for the world’s future rests. (Lorde, “Above the Wind”

55-56)

Lorde saw that blackness is a way of looking at life, an essential approach to the world. Therefore, blacks

should not be Othered since blackness is basic to every human activity.

Ayim’s “soul sister” is influenced by Lorde’s “The Day They Eulogized Mahalia” and “Sister

Outsider”. Both poets wrote their poems in commemoration of loved ones. While Ayim’s poem is a

lament on Lorde’s death, Lorde’s “The Day They Eulogized Mahalia” is in fact a dirge wept, not only

over Mahalia but over neglected black children as well:

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Yasser K. R. Aman

Six black children

burnt to death in a day care center

on the South Side

kept in a condemned house

for lack of funds

firemen found their bodies

like huddled lumps of charcoal

with silent mouths and eyes wide open.

six black children found a voice in flame

the day the city eulogized Mahalia. (Lorde, The Collected Poems

of Audre Lorde 61-62)

Lorde’s focus on the six black children’s death whose voices, and their like, were unheard is coded in

Ayim’s poem since Ayim focuses on “struggle” which is a strong tie between her and Lorde.

Ayim’s idea of soul sisterhood is based on Lorde’s “Sister Outsider” in which Lorde highlights a

common background for all black sisters everywhere disregarding space and thus stressing a geomental

image of black-skinned population. Therefore, Lorde underscores time, rather than space, as an umbrella

under which people gather: “We were born in a poor time” (Lorde. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde.

317). Lorde glorifies darkness, a principle she fostered into Afro-German writers’ belief:

but I want you

to know

your darkness also

rich

and beyond fear. (Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

317)

In 1984 Lorde taught a course on Afro-American women poets in the Free University in Berlin when

she coined and propagated the term Afro-German. In her 2nd forward to Showing Our Colors, she pointed

out the impact the book had on Afro-German thought and struggle as it resulted in the establishment of

ISD: Initiative Schwarze Deutsche. She supported the idea that Africans are biologically present in

Europe very long ago:

Yet the presence of Africa in Europe goes back before the Roman Empire A Neanderthal

skull, discovered in Dusseldorf, Germany, dates back to the Old Stone Age and is the

earliest African type found in Europe. Julius Caesar brought Black legions to Germany,

and many never returned. The historical presence of Black Africans in the courts,

universities, monasteries, and bedrooms of seven-teenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-

century Europe comes as a surprise only to those scholars pseudoeducated in

europeanized bastions of institutional ethno-centricity. At the University of Wittenberg in

the early 1700, William Anthony Amo, a Guinean who later became a state counselor in

Berlin, obtained his doctoral degree for a philosophical work entitled “The Want of

Feeling”. (Opitz x)

Lorde focused on the whites’ unified look of hatred against the colored anywhere. She experienced the

hating look from a shop in Germany and she recalled the same attitude in the States: “I have survived such

looks in Jackson, Mississippi, San Francisco, Staten Island, and countless other North American cities”

(Opitz xi). She concluded that their (Afro-American and Afro-German) “war is the same” (Opitz xi).

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Lorde stressed the fact that co-evolutionary bases can justify and cement relationships as strongly as

biological ones:

Member of the African Diaspora are connected by heritage although separated by birth.

We can draw strength from that connectedness. African Americans and Afro-Germans

incorporate within our consciousness certain splits and alienations of identity. At the

same time concentrate within our being the possibility of fusing the best of our heritages.

We are the hyphenated people, spread across every continent of the globe, members of

that international community of people of color who make up seven-eighths of the

world’s population. (Opitz xiii)

Lorde left a rich legacy that was celebrated in “Film & Cultural Festival” in 2012, the 20-year

anniversary of her death. She influenced black as well as white women in Germany getting the latter to

see white privileges and see differences in color positively. The film” Audre Lorde- The Berlin Years

1984 to 1992 (2012)”, produced by Dagmar Schultz, showed Lorde’s “contributions to the German

discourse on racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, classicism, and homophobia within the Black movement

and the Black and White women’s movement, a discourse alive and growing today” ( “Audre Lorde’s

Legacy”). The film “Hope in My Heart: The May Ayim Story (1997), co-produced by Maria Binder and

Dagmar Schultz, shows Lorde’s influence on Ayim’s poetic work. Ayim said “One of my models is

Audre Lorde…who does stand very much behind what she is doing and expressing it openly (“Audre

Lorde’s Legacy”).

The editors’ introduction of Showing Our Colors focused on the importance of providing colored

children with a home where they feel “less isolated, marginal, and exceptional” (Opitz xxii) other than

Afro-Germans did. In “Racism, Sexism, and Pre-colonial Images of Africa in Germany”, May Opitz, alias

May Ayim, “traces the evolution of race as an ideological construct by focusing on the historically

specific language and imagery used to describe people of African descent” (Goertz 309). She maintains

that Amo and Ibrahim Petrovich were of the first Africans to live and study in Germany (Opitz 4). In

Medieval fantastic stories, blacks/moors were depicted and categorized under exotic plants and animals.

Moreover, black color was a sign of ugliness, witchcraft and beastly behavior (Opitz 4-5). However, the

negative image was changed clearly in the Age of Enlightenment. In the18th century the term moor

changed into Negro separating African into white and black since the new term refers to dark-colored

people. “The thinking underlying this label attempted to link physical characteristics with intellectual and

cultural ones” (Opitz 7).

Ayim posed a question: “Were differences among humans the result of genetic difference or mutable

environmental differences?” (Opitz 7) She criticized George Louis Leclerc’s theory of evolution which

was based on anatomical knowledge. She saw that instead of placing blacks in a white environment, as

Leclerc postulated in order to see how long it would take to turn white, why whites were not to be placed

in a black environment in order to observe the same process of mutation (Opitz 7-8). I argue that

emotional features, according to DIT, are affected by environment factors so much that with the passage

of time the offspring of a black generation will genetically acquire the same characteristics of the natives.

Lorde was concerned with the situation of Afro-German women as some of her poems show: “Berlin

Is Hard on Colored Girls” and “East Berlin.” In the first part of “Berlin Is Hard on Colored Girls” the poet

draws a complicated image of barriers. First she meets “a strange woman” (The Collected Poems 375)

stressing unacquaintedness. The woman “is eating a half-ripe banana” underlying a triple barrier: one

separating life in East from that in West Germany; another separating life of the colored from that of

white Germans , and a third separating colored women from men in general. The second part starts with:

“I cross her borders at midnight” (The Collected Poems 375) stressing a necessity for pulling down all

kinds of barriers. The hyphenated adjective “half-ripe” highlights hardships incurred because of mixed

identities and negative terms such as war babies and half-breed children.

The image of a multi-layered barrier, that hinders Afro-German progress, develops, in “East Berlin”,

into one of an ambush set as a stumbling block besieging the barrier endangering all possibilities for black

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Yasser K. R. Aman

people to coexist: “ It feels dangerous now/to be Black in Berlin” (The Collected Poems 465). Lorde plays

the role of a cultural model leading the struggle against racism and raising the cause of Afro-German

women:

Already my blood shrieks

through East Berlin streets

misplaced hatreds

volcanic tallies rung upon cement

Afro-German woman stomped to death

by skinheads in Alexanderplatz

two-year-old girls

half-cooked in their campcots

who pays the price

for their disillusion? (The Collected Poems 465)

The aural image in “shrieks” symbolizes excessive anger that is clustered as grapes of wrath against

“misplaced hatreds”. The undone Afro-German woman and the “’two-year-old girls” provide a strong

justification for Lorde’s, and in turn all Afro-Germans’ rage. The poem “describes the danger she and

others with dark skins felt in the tense and explosive climate” (Michaels, “The Impact of Audre Lorde’s

Politics and Poetics on Afro-German Women Writers” 22).

Lorde even coined the term Afro-German in analogy to Afro-American, thus tying the cause of the

two colored communities stressing environmental genes both groups might have in common. In her poem

“soul sister” Ayim stresses the importance of the Afro-German term:

1984 black german women

together with AUDRE LORDE conceived the term

afro-german

for we had many names

that were not our own

for we knew no names

by which we wanted to be called

racism remains

the pale face of sickness

that privately and publicly eats away at us

today. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 135)

Lorde kept on her struggle against racism in Germany despite her suffering from cancer. In response

to the program in Rostock, she wrote a letter of protest to Chancellor Helmut Kohl showing the negative

image Germany would assume as a result. In fact, Lorde succeeded in putting Afro-German women in the

wider international community of colored people (Gerund). In her essay titled “Multi-Ethnicity and

Cultural Identity: Afro-German Women Writers’ Struggle for Identity in Post-Unification Germany”,

Jennifer E. Michaels says:

Like most Germans with biracial or African or African American and German heritage,

Ayim, Emde, and H�gel-Marshall, grew up isolated from other black people in a

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predominantly white society that marginalized them. Only in the mid-1980s did Afro-

Germans begin to define themselves as a cultural group. (209)

Ayim’s sense of isolation, being a lonely Black poet in white Germany, vanished when she met

Audre Lorde and other Afro-Germans. The Berlin Wall had fallen down while the Afro-German

Movement was developing. Despite the change that had taken place, racism was still exercised against

Afro-Germans. Ayim expressed her feelings after the fall in “autumn in germany”:

a singular incident:

in november 1990

antonio amadeu from angola

was murdered

in eberswalde

by neo-nazis

his child born shortly after by a

white german

woman

her house

shortly after

trashed

ah yes

and the police

came so late

it was too late

and the newspapers were so short

of words

it equaled silence

and on TV no picture

of this homicide

no comment on the incident:

………………………

that’s how it is:

autumn in germany

i dread the winter. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 110-11)

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Yasser K. R. Aman

The poem deals with “the Third Reich (Nazi terror regime, 1933-45)” (Gerlind). What had happened to

antonio amadeu, resulted in establishing the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, (http://www.amadeu-antonio-

stiftung.de/eng/ ), a foundation which calls for civic empowerment and a democratic culture.

The image of the oppressed Ayim draws in “autumn in germany” echoes Lorde’s “Peace on Earth”.

Ayim’s poem singled out the murder of Antonio Amadeu, while Lorde’s portrays a bloody image of mass

murder:

Before the flickering screen

goes dead rows of erupting houses

the rockets’ red glare, where

are all these brown children

running scrambling around the globe

flames through the rubble

bombs bursting in air

Panama Nables Gaza

tear gas clouding the Natal sun. (The Collected Poems 455)

The onomatopoeic image in scrambling brown children in red glare of rockets condemns racist policies

embraced by white America which is sarcastically presented as Christmas gifts: “ THIS IS A GIFT

FROM THE PEOPLE/OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” (The Collected Poems 445).

Since Chancellor Kohl’s languid unwelcoming interrogation “Out, nigger, don’t you have a home to

go to?” Afro-Germans have been at real stake. Ayim says:

For the first time since I had been living in Berlin I now had to protect myself almost

daily against undisguised insults, hostile looks and / or openly racist offenses. As in

earlier times I started again, when shopping and on public transportation, to look out for

dark faces. A friend of mine, holding her Afro- German daughter on her lap in the S-

Bahn, was told “We don’t need your kind anymore. There are already more than enough

of us!” A ten-year-old African boy was thrown out of a crowded U-Bahn train to make

room for a white German. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 48)

Actually mistreatment dates back to the aftermath of World War II. The so called occupation babies

born after 1945 were considered a serious problem that resulted in three prejudices: against the children as

the offspring of the intruder; against mother and later the children themselves; and against the mixed-

blood race theory which asserted that those children were biologically inferior (See: Opitz 81-82).

The immediate reaction of Ayim was a poem, written in 1990 and translated by her, titled

“borderless and brazen: a poem against the German “u-not-y”. The poem reflects unrelenting will for

search of an identity that includes the African and the German in an inseparable whole. The first lines

show her determination for establishing her desired identity:

i will be African

even if you want me to be german

and i will be german

even if my blackness does not suit you

i will go

yet another step further

to the farthest edge

where my sisters—where my brothers stand

where

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our

FREEDOM

begins

I will go

yet another step further and another step and

will return

when i want

if i want

and remain

borderless and brazen.

(Ayim, Blues in Black and White 48-49)

In the above poem Ayim tries to fit in her hyphenated/two part identity into one inseparable whole.

Although she states that: “[her] fatherland is Ghana, [her] mother tongue is German” (Ayim, Blues in

Black and White 46), her Afro-German identity is adaptive to and inclusive in her surroundings: “I have

been living and working in West Berlin and feel more at home in this city than anywhere else” (Blues in

Black and White 47). However, racism causes her to feel estranged even after the unity of the two

Germanys: “The new “We” in “this our country”—Chancellor Kohl’s favorite expression—did not and

does not have a place for everyone” (Blues in Black and White 48). Not all immigrants are treated on

equal footing. Some, including Black Germans of course, are categorized as foreigners “and cannot be

real Germans” (Blues in Black and White 51). The case was altered in 1990, since immigrants were given

a chance to express themselves and, indeed, “not only were painful wounds were left over but also equal

fruitful initiatives for real collaboration between black and white women came out of them” (Blues in

Black and White 55). In 1992, there was a new wave of “a racist and anti- Semitic assaults” (Blues in

Black and White 57). Despite open violence, Ayim is convinced that “ we—and I am referring to all

people in this country who do not tolerate racism and anti-Semitism—are desirous of and capable of

coalitions” (Blues in Black and White 58).

The geomental image drawn in the above poem recalls another in Lorde’s “Bicentennial Poem

# 21,000,000”:

I know

the boundaries of my nation lie

within myself

…………………………………..

My eyes fill up with muddy tears

that have no earth to fall upon. (The Collected Poems 304)

The geomental map that includes one’s hyphenated identity is oneself. Therefore, the environmental

factor is of paramount importance for formulating concepts of “identity”, “home” and “nativism”. It is one’s

own (environmental as well as biological) identity that constitute “home” in every general and special sense

of the word. Ayim’s image of going “borderless” and Lorde’s of having “boundaries” make each Afro-

German/Afro-American every inch a native of Germany and of America respectively. Ayim’s poetry:

is inherently political in that it moves the Afro-German experience away from the

unrecognized and isolated margins of German society into the midst of a global diasporic

culture. She makes few concessions to explicate cultural references that may be unfamiliar

to German readers—such as the role of the trickster figure in African mythology or the

doubly coded, verbal-visual language of Adinkra symbols3. (Goertz 307)

3 For Adinkra symbols and their explanation log onto http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra_index.htm

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Yasser K. R. Aman

In her poem “sister”, she discusses the absences of equality and criticizes the white view of the black

as exotic. The poem starts with a question that crystallizes the strange gaze blacks have always been

object to: “why do you pierce me/with your eyes…” However, the last line endorses equality: “we are

sisters” (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 30). The objectifying gaze came as a result of Kirchner’s, and

Dr. W Abel before him, propagation of the concept of Afro-Germans’ inferiority. Moreover, Kirchner

followed American researchers who categorized black people under lower intelligence. His studies

ignored sociocultural aspects. He further based his study on “F. Franke’s edited report (1915), ““The

Mental Development of Negro Children,” a summary of studies that had been conducted in African

colonies” (Opitz 87). Based on some of the results mentioned in this report, he claimed the superiority of

the European race. He did not take into account the geographical and sociocultural conditions that are

totally different from those Afro-Germans were exposed to. Moreover, one can conclude that, “ Studies

that ignore, deny, or insufficiently take into account the existence of prejudice and discrimination must

necessarily lead to the false conclusion that differences between Whites and Blacks are “racially”

conditioned” (Opitz 88). Unlike Kirchner, Rudolf Siege took into consideration the social impact on

behavior. He asserted that differences between whites and blacks are not biologically based, rather, they

result from racism and discrimination (88).

Lorde’s “Sister in Arms” both answers Ayim’s wondering about the objectifying gaze colored people

always receive and calls all colored sisters to unite and be on guard. The white objectifying look develops

into negligence and carelessness about the colored. Lorde criticizes all mass media that turn a blind eye

when it comes to colored people’s miseries:

the New York Times finally mentions your country

a half-page story

of the first white south African killed in the “unrest”

Not of Black children massacred at Sebokeng

six-year-olds imprisoned for threatening the state

not of Thabo Sibeko, first grader, in his own blood

on his grandmother’s parlor floor

Joyce, nine, trying to crawl to him

shitting through her navel

not of a three-week-old infant, nameless

lost under the burned beds of Tembisa. (The Collected Poems 357)

Ayim’s poem’s closing line “we are sisters” is a scream against the above crimes committed against

colored people in South Africa and everywhere.

Lorde’s “For Assata” provides a hope and an apocalyptic vision that looms in the future of colored

peoples’ relationships:

I dream of your freedom

as my victory

and the victory of all dark women

who forego the vanities of silence

who war and weep

sometimes against our selves

in each other

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rather than our enemies

falsehoods. (The Collected Poems 252)

Ayim’s “brothers in arms sisters of the sword” highlights interracial conflicts Lorde warns about in her

poem:

the most dangerous weapons are those

of sisters and brothers

the most cruel wars

are fought amongst themselves

in their own crises. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 136)

The theme of death-in-life catatonic state with the image of the world as a coffin recurs in Lorde’s

“A poem for a poet” and Ayim’s “no more rotten gray—for a colored republic”. Lorde criticizes the

marginalization of colored people and negligence of civil right movements and revolution:

wasn’t that world a coffin retreat

of spring whispers romance and rhetoric

Untouched

by the winds buffeting up from Greensboro

and nobody mentioned the Black Revolution

or Sit-In or Freedom Rides or SNCC (The Collected Poems 49).

Negligence of all forms of Freedom seeking, sit-ins, revolutions and committees such as Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, has developed into exploitation of freedom seekers. Ayim criticizes

political manipulation carried out in order to make elections a success. After elections:

the show is over

we all go home

the socially committed feel relieved—partly

the afflicted feel they’ve been taken for a ride—totally

the “dear alien citizens”

still without civil rights of course

…………………….

the black or however

hyphenated germans

change back into “negroes”

………………………

shortly before the next elections

they will remember us again. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 61-63)

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Yasser K. R. Aman

The same theme of negligence of colored people’s life recurs in Lorde’s “Power” (The Collected Poems

319-20) and Ayim’s “insignificant” (Blues in Black and White 96-97). Both poems underscore the fact

that it is easy for whites to ruin colored people’s life without feeling any compunction.

Speaking about her journey to her fatherland, Ayim shows her hopes for and fears from the journey:

“The closer my departure came, the stronger were my doubts about how well I had prepared myself for

the journey… Of far greater importance was my desire to know the roots of my African background”

(Ayim, Blues in Black and White 31-32). African people took her for a white lady, however, she never felt

“rejected, unwanted, or out of place” (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 33). She was alarmed when she

knew she would meet her grandfather and her family the following week. She was surprised when her

grandfather met her “with outspread arms and embrace [her] like [she] was his most beloved

granddaughter” (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 36). She felt at ease in Ghana, but in Berlin she was not

even living legally in her apartment. On her departure, her grandfather told her “to bring back a little of

the light that the whites had taken away from Africa” (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 36); but she was

not sure “what of the gleam can be brought back and what could be done with it, here or there (Ayim,

Blues in Black and White 37). In “between avenui and kreuzberg” she further compares between the two

environments: Ghana and Berlin. Her father, who represents Ghana:

teaches me patience

and understanding

he worries about me

talks of ghana

about the dreams

of the ancestors of those

with second sight. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 39)

This refers to the dream of returning to Africa (Afrocentrism). Also, it may refer to negritude. Hughes’

influence shows here. The scene shifts to Europe as she sees:

images of berlin

i explain

“ the scene”

in kreuzberg

surrounding me. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 39)

The poem ends with the phrase “in a dream” which suggests strongly that it was all a dream about making

African voices heard by Europe.

Her poem “distant ties” touches upon mixed identities and environments: Ghana and Berlin. It shows

the co-evolution of the biological and environmental genes:

my mother's hands

are white

i know

i don't know them

my mother

the hands

my father's hands

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i know

are black

i hardly know him

my father

the hands

apart

…………….

apart

…………….

apart

…………..

apart

…………

distant ties

connected distances

between continents

on the road at home. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 41-42)

Repetition of apart, typed four times apart from the body of the text, stresses the fact that her parents are

set apart, from each other and from her, which increases her torture since she is biologically as well as

environmentally a mulatto:

daughter

(Afro-German: genetic-cultural co-evolution)

father

mother

(biological genes)

(Africa: Ghana)

(Germany: Berlin)

(Environmental genes)

The above diagram explains what the poet means by distant ties,( her biological genes), that have

connected distances and continents, (Africa and Europe), in the form of an Afro-German girl, May Ayim.

Lorde’s “Inheritance—His” stresses the same biological ties as Ayim’s poem does. The speaker

focuses on having exact facial features as her father:

My face resembles your face

less and less each dy. When I was young

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Yasser K. R. Aman

no one mistook whose child I was.

Features build coloring

alone among my creamy fine-boned sisters

marked me Byron’s daughter. (The Collected Poems 434)

The speaker is biologically identified as “Byron’s daughter”. However, the father died and with the

passage of time the environmental factor effected changed in the speaker physical features:

Now I am older than you were when you died

overwork and silence exploding in your brain.

You are gradually receding from my face. (The Collected Poems 437)

Given that Homo sapiens are the product of environmental as well as biological evolution and according

to the mutual influence between environmental and biological genes, family ties, whether interrupted by

distances or death, are rebuilt and reformulated according to the acquired cultural genes. However, the

geomental image of “home” is constructed not only by Ayim’s cultural genes, but by Africans’ look at

her, an Afro-German lady seen as almost white in Ghana.

Lorde’s “Outside” and Ayim’s “fatherseeking” search for biological-based identity. Mixed parents

give the speaker in “Outside” a sense of loss; therefore, the speaker searches for identity despite the

silence of their parents:

Between the canyons of their mighty silences

mother bright and father brown

I seek my own shapes now

………………

I am blessed within my selves

who are come to make our shattered faces

whole. (The Collected Poems 280)

Ayim draws a fatherly image characterized by seriousness, smartness and tenderness. Her first

communication was with a “picture”; however, the image was slightly modified when she met her father:

face to face

your glance caught me

serious and smart and cold. bitter cold.

without words. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 24)

Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival” and Ayim’s “the time thereafter” shed light on two contradictory

images: the dream of black people, which has up till now been deferred, and the possibility of its

realization:

For those of us who live at the shoreline

…………………………….

for those of us who cannot indulge

the passing dreams of choice

who love in doorways coming and going

in the hours between dawns

looking inward and outward

at once before and after

seeking a now that can breed

futures

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like bread in our children’s mouths

so their dreams will not reflect

the death of ours

……………………………………

we were never meant to survive. (The Complete Poems 255-56)

Ayim’s poem depicts an image of a dreamed deferred/stolen, which is reminiscent of Langston Hughes’

“Harlem”, leaving the world as a waste land:

I too have a dream, brother

of people who one day

are no longer born screaming

but laughing

laughing

in colors of the rainbow

…………………………

they have preserved your dream

preserved and sold it, brother

post-cards and poster

three lines in a history book

“I Have A Dream”

a complete novel. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 138-39)

Conclusion

Dual Inheritance Theory has been used as a lens in order to focus on the impact of Audre Lorde on May

Ayim and on the genetic-cultural co-evolutionary development that gives a right to all hyphenated people

to be treated as natives. Lorde’s cultural model has been transmitted to a group of Afro-German women

who led the struggle against racism. Similarities in the Afro-American and Afro-German histories

underscore an important finding concerning identity, viz., subsequent generations in Germany and

America are every inch Germans and Americans respectively.

The comparative study of Lorde’s and Ayim’s poems proves that Lorde, a cultural model/mother and

a feminist fellow, has vertically, horizontally and obliquely transmitted cultural practices of protests,

social mobility and altruistic behavior to Afro-German women such as Ayim. Using African heritage by

Lorde and Ayim proves the possibility of perfect transmission of shared cultural beliefs, a phenotypic

reference to their genotypes.

The review of the history of racism stresses that race is not an essence nor a scientific fact of

biology. DIT proves that fully developed individuals, Homo sapiens, are the product of co-evolutionary

effects. Lorde’s 2nd forward to Showing Our Colors, and Ayim’s “Racism, Sexism, and Pre-colonial

Images of Africa in Germany” in the same collection, prove the biological presence of Africans in

Germany centuries ago; therefore, genetic as well as cultural co-evolution has undergone processes of

mutations and assimilations which make it impossible to say that black/white peoples have been

categorized according to the evolution of their genes, be them biological or cultural , thus proving

German nativity of Afro-Germans. The first interaction between white Germans and black people,

whether in German colonies in Africa or in the United States, has underscored close relations that resulted

in intermarriage; therefore, genetic-cultural co-evolution is deeply rooted, further developed and resulted

in occupation children (Besatzungskinder), also called Rhineland Bastards, brown babies and

Mischlingskind (half-breed/mongrel child), that emerged in the aftermath of the war.

Sterilization of mixed blood children was meant to annihilate the so-called racial problems; however,

seen from a different angle, it was an evil attempt to exclude people who are genetically as well as

culturally Germans. This attempt is further supported by adoption and exploitation of black Germans in

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Yasser K. R. Aman

movies. Although both segregated Germanys supported Afro- Americans in their struggle for equality and

freedom, they have not, up till now, recognized their own flesh-and-blood fellow black Germans as equal.

The impact of Afro-American scholars on Afro-German ones was so formative that the latter took

the former as cultural parents and models: Ayim saw Lorde as her model. Both “afro-german I” and

“afro-german II” indicate the transmission of cultural values through Lorde and other cultural models

such as Washington and Hughes. Moreover, the poems indicate Ayim’s ingenuity since she uses the same

language of the white German in order to both criticize their mistreatment and prove Afro-Germans’

rights to be treated as native Germans.

Ayim’s “soul sister” highlights the impact of Lorde who coined the term “Afro-German”, thus

creating strong ties between Afro-Americans and Afro-Germans, and saw that the hope for the world’s

future rests in the hyphenated people. Moreover, “soul sister” shares cultural values, such as lament for

fellow neglected black people, struggle against racism and a call for soul sisterhood, transmitted through

Lorde’s “The Day They Eulogized Mahalia” and “Sister Outsider”. As a cultural mother, Lorde’s poems

such as “Berlin Is Hard on Colored Girls” and “East Berlin” show her keen interest in Afro-German

women’s case since she plays the role of a cultural model leading the struggle against racism and raising

the cause of Afro-German women. Lorde’s “Peace on Earth”, which discusses mass murder, echoes in

Ayim’s “autumn in germany” which stresses feelings of estrangement as a result of white German racism

which resulted in murdering Antonio Amadeu and the strong reaction crystallized in establishing the

Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, a foundation which calls for civic empowerment and a democratic culture.

Ayim’s struggle against racist declaration of exclusion of Afro-Germans from the German society, such

as Chancellor Kohl’s, is crystallized in “borderless and brazen: a poem against the German “u-not-y”. The

poem stresses an unrelenting will of Afro-Germans to be considered part of the German society and of the

diaspora at the same time, and to go borderless. This recalls the impact of Lorde’s “Bicentennial Poem #

21,000,000” in which she draws a geomental image crystallizing the concepts of identity and nativity.

Lorde’s “Sister in Arms” and Ayim’s “sister” fight against crimes committed against black people and the

objectifying gaze which was unjustifiably racially based. Lorde’s “For Assata” and Ayim’s “brothers in

arms sisters of the sword” highlight the importance of joining forces against a common enemy, not to

fight each other.

Political manipulation, negligence of freedom seeking and colored people’s life recur in Lorde’s “A

poem for a poet” and Ayim’s “no more rotten gray—for a colored republic” as well as in Lorde’s “Power

and Ayim’s “insignificant”. Lorde’s “Inheritance—His” shows the impact of biological and

environmental genes. Ayim’s “between avenui and kreuzberg” and “distant ties” highlight mixed

identities and environments and prove that though biological genes of the parents may differ, they are

reproduced in the form of the Afro-German child such as Ayim’s case. Lorde’s “Outside” and Ayim’s

“fatherseeking” stress that biological-based identity can differ from cultural-based one. Lorde’s “A Litany

for Survival” and Ayim’s “the time thereafter” crystallize colored people’s lost dream of equal

opportunities and a hope for a bright future.

After reading Ayim’s poetry through Dual Inheritance Theory with Lorde’s impact in mind, many

findings are crystallized: a) there are strong ties between black people who are exposed to the same

circumstances, especially in the United States and Germany; b) similar cultural-genetic co-evolutions

underscore interactive communications among people; c) correlations between Homo sapiens, with fully

developed culturegens, and the country they have been born and raised in give them equal rights in this

country and let them stand on equal footing with others who have lived and have been exposed to the

same circumstances; therefore, Afro-Germans and Afro-Americans are every inch Germans and

Americans respectively, and any probable biological defects that may appear in colored people can, and

with the same claim, appear in white people ; d) God distributed people of common genotypes and

phenotypes throughout the universe in order for them to communicate and exchange cultural values and

practices; e) culturegens for revolution against racism and injustice have been transmitted through Afro-

American cultural models to Afro-Germans, which created a common cause; f) long standing

communications between white Germans and Afro-Americans in the United States and later between

Afro-American soldiers and scholars and Afro-Germans in Germany prove that genotypic as well as

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phenotypic traits can be transmitted among cultural groups; g) Afro-Americans (e.g. Langston Hughes)

and Afro-Germans (e.g. May Ayim) felt estranged when they visited Africa. This proves that homeland,

supposed to be basic to one’s wellbeing, is where one is born and raised so long as one is treated as equal

to any other regardless of color or race.

Further research can yield more findings: 1- a field study of colored and white groups that are

exposed to the same environmental factors will support the right for equality; and 2- in order to

underscore the role literature plays in people’s lives as it is a chapter of society and a slice of life,

different kinds of cultural transmission can be traced. This can be carried out by conducting interviews

and creating questionnaires focusing on the impact cultural models have on other literary figures. These

findings can be shared by other disciplines such as Sociology, Sociobiology, Psychology and Politics in

order to conduct further (interdisciplinary) studies.

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