African Songs of Love, War, Grief & Abuse

A collection of poems by the Guyanese-French poet Léon Damas — one of the three founders of the Négritude movement alongside Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor. Translated from the French by Mircea Rochon, with letters by Ulli Beier, and designed and illustrated by Georgina Betts. Published by Mbari Publications, Ibadan. The poems draw on Damas's native French Guiana and his experience of African and diaspora identity, covering love, war, grief, and social critique — the full emotional range of Négritude's engagement with Black life under colonialism.