Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Senghor, Léopold Sédar - Koffi Anyinefa （essay date Summer 1996）

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Koffi Anyinefa （essay date Summer 1996）

SOURCE: “Hello and Goodbye to Négritude: Senghor, Dadié, Dongala, and America,” translated by Grace E. An, in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 27, No. 2, Summer, 1996, pp. 51-69.

[In the following excerpt, Anyinefa examines Senghor's contribution to negritude ideology and his portrayal of African-Americans in “To the Black American Troops,” “Elegy for Martin Luther King,” and “To New York.”]

And I told myself of … New York and San Francisco
not a bit of this earth not smudged by my fingerprint,
and my calcaneum dug into the backs of the skyscrapers and my dirt
in the glory of jewels!
Who can boast of having more than I?
Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama.
Monstrous putrefaction of ineffective revolts,
swamps of rotten blood
trumpets, absurdly stoppered
red, blood-red lands of one blood.

Aimé Césaire, Return to my Native Land

Le fait est...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Newsweek （review date 27 July 1964）
   2. Gwendolyn Brooks （review date 13 September 1964）
   3. Robert W. July （review date 25 October 1964）
   4. O. R. Dathorne （essay date 1974）
   5. Lilyan Kesteloot （essay date 1974）
   6. Frederick Ivor Case （essay date 1975）
   7. Janis L. Pallister （essay date April 1980）
   8. Dorothy S. Blair （essay date 1984）
   9. Janet G. Vaillant （essay date 1990）
   10. Roger Shattuck and Samba Ka （review date 20 December 1990）
   11. K. Anthony Appiah （review date 5 July 1992）
   12. Isaac I. Elimimian （essay date 1994）
   13. Koffi Anyinefa （essay date Summer 1996）
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. African Literature