Afro-Asian Solidarities in Negritude Literature

This article examines the relationship between Negritude and the Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau in the mid-twentieth century. Although no formal institutional engagement existed between the two movements, we argue that the anti-colonial aesthetics and political imaginaries of Negritude embody an internationalism inspired by the Afro-Asian literary solidarities that characterized the period. In advancing this argument, we highlight what we interpret as shared critiques of imperialism, affirmations of subaltern agency, and commitments to transnational resistance, all of which situate Negritude within a broader Afro-Asian literary engagement. Through close readings of selected African and Caribbean texts published between the 1950s and the 1970s, we demonstrate how Negritude articulated a form of solidarity that resonated with the objectives of the Bureau.