Katharina Oguntoye
Katharina Oguntoye (born January 1959 in Zwickau, East Germany) is an Afro-German writer, historian, activist, and poet. She founded the nonprofit intercultural association Joliba in Germany and is perhaps best known for co-editing the book "Farbe bekennen" with May Ayim (then May Opitz) and Dagmar Schultz. The English translation of this book was entitled "". Oguntoye has played an important role in the Afro-German Movement. Life. Katharina Oguntoye grew up in Leipzig, Heidelberg and in Nigeria. According to statements from Oguntoye her mother met her father at the University of Leipzig, where he was studying with  the help of a scholarship from the German Democratic Republic. Oguntoye’s father returned to Nigeria in 1965 to take up a professorship. Her mother joined him a year later with Oguntoye and her younger brother and they lived on the university campus. Oguntoye got to know her father’s side of the family there. Two years later, in 1967, the Biafran War broke out so Oguntoye returned with her mother to her aunt’s hometown of Heidelberg in Germany. Oguntoye’s brother stayed with their father. Oguntoye describes her youth in Heidelberg as not easy in view of the  fact that few other Afro-Germans lived there. Her previous time in Nigeria was essential for her to distinguish between foreign external ascriptions and her own images. At the same time, Oguntoye began to be politically engaged in the emerging environmental movement, and later also in the women’s movement. Katharina Oguntoye moved to Berlin in 1982 to get her Abitur (the high school diploma in Germany qualifying students for university) at the Kreuzberg School for Adult Education. She was the only black person in her class in the 1980s. She says at the same time the setting of a  self-organized school gave her the opportunity to empower herself and become visible in mixed-gendered discussions with other women. It was also during this time that she came out as lesbian. She is in a civil union with her life partner, author and translator, Carolyn Gammon. Work and career. In 1984 Oguntoye attended seminars from the American poet and activist Audre Lorde who, amongst other things, was a visiting lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin.<ref>