Aimé Césaire was born in Basse-Pointe in 1913. A good student, he won a scholarship to the Lycée Schoelcher in Fort-de-France, where he had a fine education before leaving Martinique in 1931 for Paris and a hypokhâgne class at the prestigious Lycée Louis Le Grand. It was here that he met Léopold Sédar Senghor, with whom he forged a close friendship.
Together with other West Indian and African students, Léon Gontran Damas and Birago Diop, they founded the magazine "l'Etudiant Noir" in 1934.
It was in this magazine that Senghor first wrote his first poems. It was in this magazine that the term "Négritude" first appeared. This concept, built against the French colonial project, aims to reject the French project of cultural assimilation and the devaluation of Africa and its culture.
Studying at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1935, he began writing "Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal" in 1936.
This is the first book in a series of essays on the French colonial project.
After graduating from the ENS, Aimé Césaire returned to Martinique in 1939, where he became a teacher at the Lycée Schoelcher and published the magazine "Tropiques"
