There were several editions of Frantz Fanon’s books. Not surprisingly, I prefer the older and oldest editions of The Wretched of the Earth, not the new ones. The older to my ear, to my eye, had more bite. It had more grit. It had more heart. And it really bespeaks of Fanon, who was, in my view, on fire. He was burning to get his message out, and he never bit his tongue. He gave it up raw. He gave it up real, and he gave it up strong, and he was unquestionably a man who used what he called “combat literature” to move people from point A to point B to point C. That’s what combat literature does. That’s what revolutionary writing does. It gets you off your ass and makes you move. Farrington is the preferred, to my mind, translation of Fanon’s writing, and so, for me, the old stuff is better than the new stuff.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
