René Depestre, Un arc-en-ciel pour l'occident chrétien (1967)

René Depestre, Un arc-en-ciel pour l'occident chrétien (1967) Overview Un arc-en-ciel pour l'occident chrétien is René Depestre's most ambitious poetic work, published in 1967 by Présence Africaine in Paris. It is subtitled "poème-mystère vaudou" — a vodou mystery-poem — and its structure is organized as a ceremonial invocation of the lwa, the vodou spirits, directed against the Christian West. The book opens with a fierce, declaratory prelude: "je suis un nègre-tempête / Un nègre racine-d'arc-en-ciel," establishing the speaker as a figure of Black political and erotic rage who will channel the lwa as weapons against colonial civilization.