Guadeloupe (France) / All works
Poetry
Balles d'or
Not translated into English
Guy Tirolien · 1961
Synopsis
The collection opens with “Marie-Galante”, a long poem devoted to the island of the poet's ancestors: it goes back to the time of the caravels, passes through Europe and the Africa of the idols, then returns to the bare soil of the island. Other poems, such as “Afrique” or “Karukéra”, speak of the crowd, the dance and the tom-tom. In “Prière d'un petit enfant nègre”, the best known, a black child refuses to go to the white people's school.
Context
The collection came out in 1961 from Présence africaine, in the Poésie series; the publisher reissued it in 1982 and then in 1995. The most famous of its poems, written in 1943, was included in it. “Marie-Galante”, placed at the head, had been begun as early as 1938. The book is regarded as one of the major poetic works of the négritude generation, whose founders the author had known since his student years in Paris.
Who it is for
For reading négritude from a small island of the Antilles, and a child's poem that is still recited.
Prizes and reception
Reissued twice by its original publisher; counted among the great collections of négritude.
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