Read. Talk. Share.
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Do you enjoy reading books and meeting new people? Then join our new book club, led by Kendra Berry and Jasmin Krakenberg. Each month, we invite readers to come together and discuss works from contemporary German-speaking authors and explore experiences with a wide range of genres and formats.
This month the group meets in the space of the Goethe Pop Up at 7pm.
The Book Club is free and open to everyone interested, but participants must purchase the individual texts themselves and are expected to have read the title to be discussed prior to the meeting.
Feel free to read each selection in its English translation or original German; the discussion will be held in English. No registration required.
March is
Women's History Month, and we celebrate with a collection of texts highlighting a unique viewpoint to inspire you.
May Ayim: Blues in Black and White: A Collection of Essays, Poetry and Conversations (2003)
May Ayim is the pen name of May Opitz (born Sylvia Andler). Born to a German mother and Ghanaian Father, she was adopted by the Opitz family and raised in Münster. An Afro-German poet, educator, and activist, she was among the first to document a history of Africans and their descendants in Germany. Much like her mentor, Caribbean-American poet Audre Lorde, Ayim, too, believed in the “subversive power of lyrical language” to combat racism. Through her poetry, essays, and political activism, she thought to dissolve the socially and politically constructed borders that continued to exist after the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
This collection marks Ayim’s personal journey and search for identity along with a critique of German society’s treatment of people of color. In her writing, she integrates diverse styles, such as the Blues genre and West African Adinkra symbols, that reflect her wide-ranging interests in and ties to the transnational Black diaspora. Poems such as “afro-deutsch I,” “afro-deutsch II,” and “autumn in germany” tackled the themes of identity, difference, community, and marginalization, reflecting her (and other Black Germans’) experiences in Germany.
Find an excerpt of her book in English at
Blackatlantic. Focus on this for our discussion or feel free to read additional material (in English or German) from the book.
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