Lines of Fire: Poetry of the Afro-Asian Writers

The struggle against direct colonialism by millions of people across Africa and Asia was fought with a view to the creation of a new world, one that would be free from the horrors of colonialism. Nowhere was a struggle waged on anything but hope and absolute faith in the eventual defeat of the colonial masters, some of who, like the British and French, connived and massacred in the vain hope of holding on to their possessions. The anti-colonial struggles not only laid bare the utter brutality of the colonizer, especially in their dying days, it also showed that the colonized had no choice but to unite within their respective countries but also across the continents against their common enemies. This desire would force them to come together in Bandung in 1955. The dreamers of this new destiny were clear, then, that not only was it necessary to take back control of the human and material resources from colonial powers but also to reclaim the past and culture as well and get back not only the land that had been stolen but the voice as well. Those fighting with guns, with people or with songs were also in search of a bridge that they could cross so as to find each other. Following Bandung, this indignation would resonate in a general desire for South-South unity and would lead to the largest-ever gathering of Afro-Asian Writers. This was the first time so many African and Asian writers had gathered together, and it was all the more remarkable that many of the writers did not speak a common language other than at of common experience, a common history of Africa and Asia as well as a common history of resistance in Africa and Asia. This book is a collection of poems by poets, leaders of liberation movements, activists, journalists and others involved in the struggle for freedom. They are drawn from Lotus Magazine and from The Call.