(In)soumise à la censure: l’activisme littéraire et politique de Suzanne Roussi-Césaire

This article focusses on Suzanne Césaire’s writings and activism during the Tropiques years, and her dealings with political, literary and social censorship. Aimé Césaire was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. A writer, politician and theorist, he was one of the founders of the literary and theoretical movement celebrating black identity and culture called Negritude. Suzanne Césaire, born Roussi, Aimé Césaire’s wife from 1937 to 1963, was one of the pioneers of Caribbean women’s and feminist literature. Along with her husband and a group of Martinican intellectuals, she co-founded the journal Tropiques, published between 1941 and 1945, when Martinique was under the control of the Vichy government. She contributed seven articles to the journal, on psychoanalysis, Surrealism, exoticism, and Caribbean identity. She also represented the Tropiques editorial board in its transactions with Vichy government censors.