Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Suzanne Césaire

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Died
  
1966, Yvelines, France

Suzanne Césaire UPNEBookPartners The Great Camouflage Suzanne Csaire

Suzanne c saire fontaine solaire


Suzanne Césaire [Roussi] (11 August 1915 to 16 May 1966) was born in Martinique, and was a French-speaking writer, poet, scholar, post-colonialist, and Surrealist.

Contents

Suzanne Césaire Prix de thse 2015 du CNMHE Prix Suzanne Csaire CNMHE

In 1936 she married Aimė Cėsaire, with whom she had six children.

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Life and influence

Suzanne Césaire Suzanne Csaire une grande voix des cultures antillaise Paris

Raised and educated in an assimilationist French culture - she met her husband while finishing her education in Paris - Suzanne was a pioneer in the search for an alternative cultural framework to that provided for Martinique by colonial discourse. With her husband, she set up the magazine Tropiques, in an early edition of which she attcked both the aping of traditional French styles of poetry by West Indian writers, and 'The Happy Antilles' view of the island promoted by official French culture. Her poem of 1941, Misère d'une poésie, condemned what she termed "Littérature de hamac. Littérature de sucre et de vanille. Tourisme littéeraire" [Literaure of the hammock, of sugar and vanilla. Literary tourism].

Suzanne Césaire httpsrepeatingislandswordpresscomfiles2009

Her encounter with André Breton opened the way for her development of Afro-Surrealism - her use of surrealist concepts to illuminate the colonial dilemma. Her dictum - "La poésie martinique sera cannibale ou ne sera pas" [Cannibal poetry or nothing] - pointed the way to a re-capture of the Caribbean roots of her culture, as opposed to a force-fed Europeanism.

Suzanne Césaire Le Grand Camouflage gathers Suzanne Csaire39s essays Repeating Islands

While largely overshadowed in her lifetime by her husband and his clear-cut, if theoretical doctrine of Nėgritude, Suzanne's repudiation of simple idealised answers - whether assimilationist, Africanist, or creole - to the ambiguities of the West Indian situation has proved increasingly influential in later postcolonial studies.

Further Eeading

Suzanne Césaire Surrealist NYC The Great Camouflage Suzanne Csaire

  • L. Kesteloot, Black Writers in French (1974)
  • Maryse Condé, 'Unheard Voice: Suzanne Cėsaire and the Construct of a Caribbean Identity' in A. Newson ed., The Transforming Voices of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars (1998)

  • Suzanne Césaire Suzanne Roussi aka Suzanne Csaire Centennial of a Pioneer

    References

    Suzanne Césaire Wikipedia