Dominican Republic / All works
Poetry
Caribbean African upon Awakening
Caribe africano en despertar
Blas Jiménez · 1984
Synopsis
Poems that claim for the Dominican Republic and for the Caribbean an African ancestry that colonial history has concealed. The book opens with a tribute to a grandfather, old Fello, who left his grandson his “maroon pride”; it sings of a sea “of many islands and colours” that brings happiness only to tourists, an old Black woman of a hundred, the Guinea grass “African like me”, the island lived as an exile.
Context
The collection appeared in 1984, four years after its author's first book, and was reprinted in 2006. Fernando Valerio-Holguín sees in his collections a “neo-negritude” that renews the negritude of the thirties, at the risk of essentialism, and notes the borrowing of figures from Nicolás Guillén and Francisco Domínguez Charro. Antonio D. Tillis translated it into English in a bilingual edition published in 2010.
Who it is for
In Spanish, translated into English; a poetry of struggle and memory, rhythmic, which requires knowing the Dominican debate on race.
Prizes and reception
Studied by academic critics, then translated into English by Antonio D. Tillis in 2010.