Showing Her Colors: An Afro-German Writes the Blues in Black and White

This essay undertakes a detailed analysis of May Ayim's blues in schwarz weiss and examines her development of what she terms Ayim's "hybrid language" -- an expressive poetic style in which African and German elements are not mutually exclusive but rather two interwoven strands that Ayim brings together to articulate the texture of her identity as a Black German. Goertz contends that Ayim's use of complex forms of irony and displacement constitutes a sophisticated practice of "defamiliarization" that represents an important new signifying practice in German literary expression.