Return to My Native Land

The undisputed masterpiece of négritude and a poetic milestone of anti-colonialism. "We shall speak. We shall sing. We shall shout." This blazing autobiographical poem by the founder of the négritude movement became a rallying cry for decolonization when it appeared in 1939. Following one man's 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." "A Césaire poem explodes and whirls about itself like a rocket, suns burst forth whirling and exploding." "The most influential Francophone Caribbean writer of his generation." Translated by John Berger and Anna Bostock.