Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out - Paperback

by May Optiz (Editor)

Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out is an English translation of the German book Farbe bekennen, edited by author May Ayim, Katharina Oguntoye, and Dagmar Schultz. It is the first published book by Afro-Germans. It is the first written use of the term Afro-German.

Author Biography

MAY OPITZ (later known as May Ayim, 1960-1996) was a Black German poet, educator, and activist whose academic thesis on the history of Afro-Germans formed the scholarly backbone of Showing Our Colors, or Farbe bekennen. A founding figure of the Afro-German movement, she co-founded both the organization ADEFRA (Afro-Deutsche Frauen/Afro-German Women) and the Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (ISD). Her poetry collections Blues in Schwarz Weiss (1995) and nachtgesang (1997) are landmark works of Black German literature. She died in Berlin in 1996.

KATHARINA OGUNTOYE is an Afro-German historian, educator, and activist based in Berlin. She co-founded ADEFRA and ISD, and is the author of Eine afro-deutsche Geschichte (1997; English translation, 2024), a pioneering work documenting the history of Black people in Germany. A recipient of the 2024 Obermayer Award, Oguntoye has spent decades recovering and preserving the largely unacknowledged history of Black Germans.

DAGMAR SCHULTZ (born 1941, Berlin) is a German sociologist, filmmaker, publisher, and lecturer. She co-founded the Feminist Women's Health Center in Berlin--the first of its kind in Germany--and co-founded Orlanda Women's Press, serving as its publisher until 2001. She habilitated at the Institute of Sociology at the Free University of Berlin in 1989 and taught seminars at the JFK Institute of North American Studies. A longtime collaborator and close friend of poet Audre Lorde, Schultz co-produced Hope in My Heart: The May Ayim Story (2007) and directed the acclaimed documentary Audre Lorde--The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 (2012).