Aimé Césaire
Martinican poet, playwright, and politician who co-founded the Négritude movement with Senghor. Discourse on Colonialism is a searing indictment of European civilization's colonial violence. His Notebook of a Return to the Native Land is the foundational poem of francophone Black literature.
Works
- Discourse on ColonialismColonialism as violence, cultural genocide, and modern civilization's moral bankruptcy
- Notebook of a Return to the Native LandPoetic meditation on Caribbean identity, Negritude, and return to native homeland
- A TempestDramatic adaptation of Shakespeare's Tempest centering colonized resistance to oppression
- Letter to Maurice ThorezLetter explaining Black Francophone withdrawal from French Communist Party over racism
- The Tragedy of King ChristopheTragic play about Haitian revolutionary leader and independence struggle