Notebook of a return to my Native Land | Aimé Césaire

The first bilingual edition of this radically original work

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.

This intriguing poem by Martiniquan poet Césaire, credited as the literary beginning of the Négritude movement, is a must-have. I remember encountering a French copy a couple of years ago and reading it in one sitting. Even though I didn't understand everything, his writing touched me in a way that I hadn't experienced before.

Bilingual French/English edition translated by A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman. 

Paperback | 96 pages | ISBN 9780819500663