In "Africa" David Diop
apostrophizes the continent, saying:
Africa, tell me
Africa
Is this your back that is unbent
This back that never breaks under the
weight of humiliation
This back trembling with red scars
The question mark never comes, showing how completely rhetorical such questions are
(though the last lines of the poem provide a response, if not an answer). Diop, who was born in
France to a Cameroonian mother and a Senegalese father, says that he has never known Africa, but
its "beautiful black blood" flows in his veins. It is no accident that thehe settles
upon is bloody. The back trembling with red scars is obviously an image of colonization and
slavery.
Diop personifies Africa, and the personified continent does say no
to the whip after the red scars have been inflicted. Nonetheless, the final, ambivalent image of
hope (bitter, but free) is in a plant rather than a person: the young strong tree springing up
amid white flowers as Africa leaves behind the red scars of slavery.
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