Louis-Marie Pouka
Encyclopedia
Louis-Marie Pouka was a Cameroon
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...

ian poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 who advocated the assimilation
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...

 of Cameroonian peoples into French culture. Pouka believed that colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

 was part of God's plan to bring African peoples into the wider world. His belief in the superiority of French culture and lifestyle is evident in his 1943 poem "Pleurs sincères", which "laments the indignities imposed on French citizens during German occupation" but makes no mention of cruel practices of French colonials
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

 in Cameroun
Cameroun
Cameroun was a French and British mandate territory in central Africa, now constituting the majority of the territory of the Republic of Cameroon....

, such as the imposition of forced labour on Africans.

Pouka moved to France in the 1940s. The society he found there failed to live up to his idealistic expectations, but he explained such elements away as deviations from God's plan for Cameroonians and the belief that God would punish those French people whom he found cruel or exploitative. Nevertheless, when Pouka returned to Cameroun in the 1950s, his poems were increasingly characterised by a "vague uneasiness". Pouka struggled to reconcile his belief in French culture and equality and his realisation that colonialism did not allow for the equality of Africans and Europeans.
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