The Honorees
Writer-activist Aimé Césaire coined the Pan-Africanist Négritude concept along with poet and future Senegalese President Léopold Senghor and French Guianese writer Léon Damas. Aimé wrote that Black people, worldwide, should reject the norms that encouraged the adoption of European intellectual traditions. Psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon said that Aimé’s ideas, especially his leaving Europe and returning to Martinique to create unique African or diasporic African intellectual traditions, influenced his own writings.Raised and educated in an assimilationist French culture, Suzanne, wife of Aimé, pioneered in the search for an alternative cultural framework, but her writings are often overshadowed by the work of her husband.
Martinique
Martinique is an overseas region of France. The French government forbids ethnic censuses. However, demographers estimate that African Martinicans and those of African-white-Indian mixture make up 80 percent of the population. Other groups include Asian Indian, White, Lebanese, Jewish, Syrian, and Chinese Martinicans.
