The Original 1939 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

Download or read book The Original 1939 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land written by Aimé Césaire and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aimé Césaire’s masterpiece, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, is a work of immense cultural significance and beauty. This long poem was the beginning of Césaire’s quest for négritude, and it became an anthem of Blacks around the world. Commentary on Césaire’s work has often focused on its Cold War and anticolonialist rhetoric—material that Césaire only added in 1956. The original 1939 version of the poem, given here in French, and in its first English translation, reveals a work that is both spiritual and cultural in structure, tone, and thrust. This Wesleyan edition includes the original illustrations by Wifredo Lam, and an introduction, notes, and chronology by A. James Arnold.