“Verses For Black Mothers”: Hughes, McKay, Brooks, Cullen, Toomer, Senghor, Césaire, Naylor and Angelou

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Throughout African-American literature, the maternal figure has often held a central place. In many works written by African-Americans, the Negro woman, whether mother or grandmother, transcends her traditional biological role to embody survival, resistance and resilience. A central component of a community grappling with oppression and injustice, she is a source of love, strength and wisdom. A number of novels have succeeded brilliantly in highlighting these qualities and the primordial role of the Black woman, such as Sethe in Toni Morrison's Beloved, who pulls out all the stops to safeguard the memory of her past and her descendants, or Lena Younger (Mama) in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, who reveals an unwavering love and determination to maintain dignity and family unity. The aim of our article “Verses For Black Mothers” is to show that the African-American woman, through her beauty, her resilience, her sacrifice and role as guardian of the collective memory of Blacks in America, takes also a pride of place in African-American poetry, and even beyond, with French-speaking poets of the Negritude movement in particular.