The Original 1939 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land: Bilingual Edition (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

About this book

The first bilingual edition of this radically original work Aim Csaires 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 Csaires quest for ngritude and it became an anthem of Blacks around the world. Commentary on Csaires work has often focused on its Cold War and anticolonialist rhetoricmaterial that Csaire 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. Publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.