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"Gained In Translation": Building The African Diaspora Through Linguistic Transposition In 20th Century Poetry, Cyril Vettorato

CALL: Irish Journal for Culture, Arts, Literature and Language

This paper examines the relationship between language and diaspora by trying to look beyond the question of what befalls native tongues in the countries of arrival. The experience of forced migration undergone by African people brought to the Americas might have dispossessed them from their ancestral tongues, but it did not prevent them from aspiring to use language, be it the language of the former slave owner, to express their identity and shared historical experience. Using the example of American poet Langston Hughes and his Cuban peer Nicolás Guillén, this article will highlight the way poets from the African diaspora …