Aime’ Cesaire’s “Return to My Native Land,” one of the great prose-poetry works of the twentieth century, was parented by not one but three literary movements: the Negritude Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, and French Surrealism. The book’s very rich suffusion of cultural and political nuances may be attributed to the Harlem Renaissance and the Negritude Movement while its linguistic dexterity and philosophical daring would have to acknowledge some allegiance to French surrealism. The result is a masterful examination of a soul simultaneously created by and torn between two cultural sensibilities: the European and the African. Like James Baldwin, Albert Camus, and Frantz Fanon in their various works, Cesaire in “Return to My Native Land” take racism and class oppression to task at the same time that he delves most deeply into the greater nature of the human condition itself.

Aberjhani
author of "Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance"
and "Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black" ( )