Poetry
أغاني أفريقيا
Not translated into English
Muhammad al-Fayturi · 1955
Synopsis
In this first collection, the poet's voice declares itself African and black, and makes of that colour, long regarded as a mark of inferiority, a source of pride. Slavery, colonial domination and racial humiliation are told in the first person, as a memory that belongs to the one who speaks: the poet refuses to let the colour of his skin deprive him of his freedom, and calls on the continent to rise up against those who enslaved it.
Context
The collection appeared in 1955, while its author was still a student in Cairo, with a preface by the Egyptian critic Mahmoud Amin al-Alim. It opens a series of books devoted to Africa, published until the mid-sixties, which earned the poet the name of the voice of Africa in the Arabic language. His readers saw in it the Arab face of négritude, of which Senghor was the great figure in French, and it made its author one of the pioneers of free verse.
Who it is for
Poems in Arabic, not translated into French. They are read in the light of négritude, a movement born in French, whose substance the author carried into Arabic.
Prizes and reception
The book earned its author the name of poet of Africa, and led to his being regarded as the first to carry the condition of Black people into Arabic.