Négritude
Négritude,a term used to denote a movement in literature that dates from the 1930s, and which derived its impetus from French-speaking African and Caribbean writers. It was a movement that sought to recover and define the richness of black cultural values in the face of the dominant values of European colonialism, and it emerged specifically as a protest against French colonial rule and the French policy of assimilation. Prominent amongst its members were the poet and essayist Léopold Sédar Senghor ( 1906 – 2001 ), who became, in 1960 , the first president of the Republic of Senegal; Aimé Césaire ( 1913 – ), poet and dramatist from Martinique (Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, 1939 ; English trans., Return to My Native Land, 1968 ); and Léon Damas ( 1912 – 78 ), from French Guiana.
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