Introduction : Caliban's women -- Race signs of the interwar times : Pan-Noirisme and La Dépêche Africaine -- Jane Nardal : a new race spirit and the Francophone new negro -- Les soeurs Nardal and the Clamart salon : content and context of La Revue du Monde Noir, 1931-1932 -- Paulette Nardal : Antillean literature and race consciousness -- Suzanne Césaire : Tropiques, Negritude, surrealism, 1941-1945 -- Appendix : edited and annotated translations / T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting and Georges Van Den Abbeele -- Black internationalism (1928) / Jane Nardal -- Exotic puppets (1928) / Jane Nardal -- Acts of grace (1929) / Paulette Nardal -- In exile (1929) / Paulette Nardal -- The awakening of race consciousness among Black students (1932) / Paulette Nardal -- Letter from Lieutenant de Vaisseau Bayle, Chief of Information Services, to the editor of the Review Tropiques (May 10, 1943) -- Response from Tropiques (May 12, 1943) -- The malaise of a civilization (1942) / Suzanne Césaire -- The great camouflage / Suzanne Césaire
Summary:
The Negritude movement, which signaled the awakening of a pan-African consciousness among black French intellecutals, has been understood almost exclusively in terms of the contributions of its male founders: Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon G. Damas. This masculine genealogy has completely overshadowed the central role played by French-speaking black women in its creation and evolution. In Negritude Women, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting offers a long-overdue corrective, revealing the contributions made by the women who were not merely integral to the success of the movement but often in its vanguard. In exploring their influence on the development of themes central to Negritude - black humanism, the affirmation of black peoples and their cultures, and the rehabilitation of Africa - Sharpley-Whiting provides the movement's first genuinely inclusive history. -- from back cover
