Literary Birthday – 29 August – René Depestre
Happy Birthday, René Depestre, born on 29 August 1926.
René Depestre Quotes
- I wear my roots wherever I go.
- In my childhood, my brothers and sisters listened to me, especially when we were confined within the walls of the house. I invented stories inspired by the rain, the sea, rivers and trees. I fantasised a lot about the nature of all that struck the imagination of young Haitians. I grew up, so to speak, in a literary mould.
- Today it is not a question of affirming black cultures versus others. The colonial or racial question has been replaced by the issue of globalisation. If the latter remains strictly financial, we are heading for disaster.
René Depestre is a Haitian poet and is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in Haitian literature. He lived in Cuba as an exile from the Duvalier regime for many years and was a founder of the Casa de las Americas publishing house. He is the author of Hadriana in All My Dreams. A peer of seminal figures AimA CA saire, Pablo Neruda, and AndrA Breton, Depestre has engaged with the politics/aesthetics of negritude, social realism, and surrealism for more than half a century.
Source for Image: Etienne Rouziès, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ren%C3%A9_Depestre_(25-02-2017).jpg
by Amanda Patterson
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