Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Senghor, Léopold Sédar - Roger Shattuck and Samba Ka (review date 20 December 1990)


Senghor, Léopold Sédar - Roger Shattuck and Samba Ka (review date 20 December 1990)

Roger Shattuck and Samba Ka (review date 20 December 1990)

SOURCE: “Born Again African,” in New York Review of Books, December 20, 1990, pp. 11-2, 14, 16, 18, 20-1.

[In the following review, Shattuck and Ka provide an overview of Senghor's political and literary career along with commentary on Oeuvre poétique, Ce que je crois, and Janet G. Valliant's Black, French, and African: A Life of Leopold Sedar Senghor.]

1.

On July 7, 1928, the graduation ceremonies of the new French lycée in Dakar, Senegal, were dignified by the presence of the governor general of West Africa. Primarily the children of white colonial administrators and businessmen, the school's hundred-odd students included about fifteen Africans, only one in the graduating class. They had been put through their paces for the baccalaureate by examiners sent from Bordeaux to maintain French standards. After the speeches, when the prizes were finally...

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