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The Poetics of Liberation
For Further Reading
• To learn more about Assata Shakur’s work and its role in anti-carceral movements, we recommend Randall Horton’s “The Silent Ones: Missing Women’s Voices from the Inside.”
• Hrag Vartanian has written insightfully about “The Revolutionary Postcolonial Imagination of Surrealism.”
• To learn more about Suzanne Cesaire’s role in the Surrealist movement, we recommend ordering “1943: Surrealism and Us” in The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissent, translated by Keith L. Walker, from your library. But you may also be fascinated by Teresa Svoboda’s account of her work as well.
• Susan Griffin tells the story of Robert Desnos’s radical, liberatory imagination in “Can the Imagination Save Us?”
• Larry Neal’s essay that borders on manifesto for “The Black Arts Movement” is at
• We recommend ordering New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement from your library to read Cherise Pollard’s full essay and to read other essays about the movement as well.
Poets of the French Resistance
In this chapter we described how Robert Desnos’s poetry and politics were aligned. Here are some other poets who found similar strength of conviction, in part through poetry, and risked their lives fighting the Nazi occupation in France.
• Few of Madeline Riffaud’s poems are available in English, but you can read one and learn more about her role in the Resistance in this article at Jacobin.
Post-Colonial Surrealism and Afro-Surrealism
In The Afrosurreal Manifesto, D. Scot Miller quotes Leopold Senghor, who made the following distinction: "European Surrealism is empirical. African Surrealism is mystical and metaphorical. We encourage you to read more deeply into the Afro-Surreal tradition we touched on in this chapter.
D. Scot Miller, The Afrosurreal Manifesto
Ashunda Norris, “Black Women’s Avant-Garde Poetics: Politics, Creative Survival, and the Afro-Surreal.” Taint Taint Taint Magazine. (November 2021).
René Ménil. Though frequently cited as a major figure in Caribbean poetry and poetics, too little of his work has been translated into English. We include his name here to encourage students to consider translating his work as a way to serve the literary community while deepening their own skills in poetry.
M. NourbSe Philip, who is also pretty well recognized as a documentary poet
Revolutionary Poets of Central and South America
Raúl González Tuñón. Another influential writer whose work has not often been translated into English. Translation is a great way for emerging writers to hone their own craft and serve the literary community!
Poets of the Black Arts Movement
