The Protest Poetry of Muhamad al-Fayturi and Langston Hughes

Abstract

This paper analyzes the protest poetry of the black Sudanese poet, Muhammad al-Fayturi and the Afro-American poet, Langston Hughes in order to explore new horizons in the field of cross-cultural and race studies linking the Afro-American poetic tradition with its counterpart in Africa and the Arab World. The paper argues that the protest poetry of al-Fayturi and Hughes is a response to the painful experience of the black people in Africa and the American Diaspora which transforms blackness into a powerful mechanism of anger and revolution. Dismissing the policy of systematic interpretive betrayal advocated by those who attempt to ignore the black experience of agony and pain, the two poets recalled crucial episodes from the black history of struggle against tyranny and racism in Africa and the United States. Being convinced that black culture survives through the centuries as an underlying force that threatens to rise to the surface in protest against oppression and hegemony al-Fayturi and Hughes created a counter-poetics to dismantle narratives which aim to distort history and obscure the sacrifices of the black people in Africa and the United States during the eras of slavery and colonization.