Négritude

The word was coined by Aimé Césaire in the thirties, in the Latin Quarter, where Caribbean and African students founded reviews to turn the insult into pride. Cahier d'un retour au pays natal is the founding text: a long prose poem that starts from the poverty of Martinique and reaches all of deported Africa. Senghor added the call for a civilisation of the universal, Damas the anger of the short poem, Roumain the Haitian peasant novel. The movement preceded independence and gave generations a language in which to speak of themselves.

works 5

• PoetryMusique nègreLéon Laleau · 1931not translated into EnglishPoems in which a Haitian diplomat feels the gap between his French language and an African heritage.Literature
• PoetryPigmentsLéon-Gontran Damas · 1937In Paris, Black students from the colonies seek a poetry that refuses assimilation.Literature
• PoetryJournal of a HomecomingCahier d'un retour au pays natalAimé Césaire · 1939A young poet returns to his island and refuses to look at colonial misery there as a mere spectator.Literature
• NovelMasters of the DewGouverneurs de la roséeJacques Roumain · 1944A man back from abroad searches for the water that would save his village and the peace that would allow it to be shared.Literature
• PoetryÉthiopiquesLéopold Sédar Senghor · 1956not translated into EnglishSenegal still a colony, four years before independence, where a poet and deputy writes in French verses made to be spoken to African rhythms.Literature