Black Woman

In “Black Woman,” Senghor reclaims African identity by centering the Black woman as the origin of African culture and as a source of national pride. The repeated direct address—”Naked Woman, Black woman” (Lines 1, 9) frames her not as an object of the colonial gaze but rather as a praiseworthy figure in her own right. Her skin, “robed in the color of life (Line 2), symbolizes a living, dignified Africa rather than one that exists outside of history. The speaker, once under her protection, now sees her as a “Land of Promise” (Line 6), signaling his rising awareness of his heritage and the potential of Africa.

This reclamation is not just nostalgic; rather, it represents Africa as dynamic, vibrant, and evolving. References to historical empires, such as the “oil of the princes of Mali” (Line 19), connect modern Black identity to a powerful, precolonial past. The woman’s body, represented with layers of metaphors drawn from the natural world of Africa, becomes the ground for renewal of pride. These natural phenomena are productive creators of the landscape—the wind plays, the gold ripples, and the skin shimmers (Lines 24-26). This movement signals a focus on the future rather than the past, countering colonial erasure of Africa as the passive recipient of European intervention.