The changing face of Afro-Caribbean cultural identity : Negrismo and Négritude / Mamadou Badiane.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Searching for identity : the first light of dawn -- Caribbean and African cultural labyrinths -- Negrismo and Négritude : reflection on two poetics of Caribbean identity -- Identity conflicts.

The Changing Face of Afro-Caribbean Cultural Identity looks primarily at two literary movements that appeared in the Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean as well as in Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. It draws on speeches and manifestos, and use cultural studies to contextualize ideas. It poses the bases of both movements in the Caribbean and in Africa, and lays out the literary antecedents that influenced or shaped both movements. This book examines the search for cultural identity. This search is extended to the Negritude movement through the poems of Senghor and Damas. Mamadou Badiane further discusses the under-represented Negritude women writers who were silenced by their male counterparts during the first half of the twentieth century. Ultimately, this is a book on Caribbean cultural identity that shows it in a slippery and fluctuating zone. By demonstrating that while the founders of the Negritude movement both identified themselves as descendants of Africans and were proud to proclaim their African heritage that see themselves as a product of miscegenation between different cultures.