“Is It Because My Face Is Black?”

Abstract

AbstractThis article focuses on three poems written by one of the late 20th century writers in Sudan, Muhammad Miftāh al-Faytūrī (b.1930), in order to show how the Sudanese have thought about race and racial subjectivities. It situates “al-Tūfān al-Aswad”, “Ilā Wajhin Abyad” and “Thawrat Qaryah” against the postcolonial theories of Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Edward Said and the uncelebrated Sudanese critic, Mu‘āwiyyah Muhammad Nūr (1909-1941). The article reengages postcolonial discourse in and on Africa, retrieves Arabs' perspective on Black politics and identities and tries to show how al-Faytūrī, using Sudan's Afro-Arabic cultural heritage as a reference point, has tried to give agency to Africans even under the unfavourable atmosphere of colonialism in Africa.