Poetas y poesía del Sáhara Occidental. Antropología de la poesía nacional saharaui (J. C. Gimeno Martin and al.)

“This book is an extraordinary work that puts Sahrawi poets on the map. Invisible, making them known is, in itself, a valuable contribution to the decolonisation of Eurocentric literature. However, this book goes further, for three main reasons: firstly, the Sahrawi poets wrote in Hassania, a variant of the Arabic language spoken by the Sahrawis, and were translated into Spanish by the Sahrawi poets of the Generation of Friendship, who write poems in Spanish. Translation in this case is a remarkable exercise in hospitality between languages, in intercultural translation. Secondly, the book is the result of a collaborative research project involving a group of Sahrawi social and cultural activists and Sahrawi and Spanish social science researchers. The poets’ presentations are brilliant texts, stories of life and poets that constitute an eloquent and compelling exercise in the ecology of knowledge. Thirdly, this book is an exercise in political responsibility by university researchers who see their work as knowledge with the Saharawi people, not knowledge of the Saharawi people. It represents an extraordinary work of internationalist cooperation. In this sense, it becomes a knowledge born of struggle and, consequently, a knowledge of the epistemologies of the South. For these reasons, this book is almost unique. I can think of no better reason to recommend it highly” – Boaventura de Sousa Santos.