I refuse to pass my swellings off for authentic glories. And I laugh at my old childish imaginings. No, we have never been amazons at the court of the King of Dahomey, nor the princes of Ghana with eight hundred camels, nor doctors Timbuctoo when Askia the Great was king, nor architects at Djenné, nor Madhis, nor warriors. We do not feel in our armpits the itch of those who once carried the lance. And because I have sworn to conceal nothing of our history (I who admire nothing so much as sheep grazing on an afternoon in its own shadow), I wish to confess that we were always quite undistinguished dishwashers, small-time shoeshiners, at the very most fairly conscientious witch-doctors, and the only record we hold is our staying power under the whip. For centuries this country repeated that we are brute beasts; that the human heartbeat stops at the gates of the black world; that we are walking manure hideously proffering the promise of tender cane and silky cotton, and they branded us with red-hot irons and we slept in our shit and were sold in public squares and a yard of English cloth and salted Irish meat were cheaper than us and this country was quiet, calm, saying that the spirit of God was in its acts.

— Return to My Native Land by Aimé Césaire (Page 36)