RETURN TO MY NATIVE LAND

The undisputed masterpiece of negritude and a poetic milestone of anti-colonialism Guardian We shall speak. We shall sing. We shall shout. This blazing autobiographical poem by the founder of the negritude movement became a rallying cry for decolonisation when it appeared in 1939. Following one mans return from Europe to his homeland of Martinique, it is a reckoning with the trauma of slavery and exploitation, and a triumphant anthem for Black identity, one which reclaims and remakes language itself. Nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this time Andre Breton A Cesaire poem explodes and whirls about itself like a rocket, suns burst forth whirling and exploding Jean-Paul Sartre The most influential Francophone Caribbean writer of his generation Independent Translated by John Berger and Anna Bostock