Birago Ismaël Diop (11 December 1906 – 25 November 1989) was a Senegalese poet, storyteller, veterinarian, and diplomat whose work restored general interest in African folktales and was a major contribution to the Négritude literary movement.
Early life
Son of Ismaël Diop and Sokhna (Diawara), Birago Diop was born in Ouakam, a neighborhood in Dakar, Senegal. His mother, aunt and extended family raised him with his two older brothers, Massyla (a writer) and Youssoupha; his father had disappeared, possibly dead, two months before Diop was born.
It was in the late 1930s, during his work as the head of the government's cattle-inspection service for several regions in Senegal and Mali, that Diop met a number of storytellers, including the Wolof griot Amadou Koumba. Many of his poems and tales have their roots in the oral African traditions that he encountered during his childhood and in this period of his life.
During and after World War II
In 1942, during World War II, Diop returned to France for two years, working again at the Institute for Exotic Veterinary Medicine, and he reconnected with the friends he had made during his previous time in France.
After Diop returned to Africa in 1944, he served as a director of zoological technical services in Ivory Coast and Upper Volta (modern day Burkina Faso) between 1946 and 1950. Between 1950 and 1954, he worked in Mauritania. In 1950, he was awarded the Grand Prix littéraire de l'Afrique occidentale française along with Ousmane Socé Diop. Diop later acknowledged that the tales were drawn from a number of storytellers he had met, not only Amadou Koumba. In 1964, however, he returned to Dakar, opened a veterinary clinic and continued to be involved in literary activities, such as publishing in the women's magazine Awa, and adapting his story "L'Os" into a play, L'Os de Mor Lam. These were followed by five volumes of memoirs between 1978 and 1989: La Plume raboutée (1978), À Rebrousse-temps (1982), À Rebrousse-gens (1985), and Du temps de...(1986), and Et les yeux pour me dire (1989).
Death
Birago Diop died on 25 November 1989 in Dakar at the age of 82.
Awards and honours
- 1950: Grand Prix littéraire de l'Afrique occidentale française for Les Contes d'Amadou Koumba
- 1964: Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire for Contes et Lavanes
- Officier de la Légion d'Honneur
- Chevalier de l'Étoile Noire
- Chevalier du Mérite Agricole
See also
- List of Senegalese writers