Bernard Binlin Dadié was born on January 10, 1916, and passed away on March 9, 2019. He was a writer from Ivory Coast who worked as a novelist, playwright, poet, and government official. From 1957 until his later years, he held many important jobs in the government of Côte d'Ivoire. He served as the Minister of Culture from 1977 to 1986.

Biography

Dadié was born in Assinie, Côte d'Ivoire. He studied at a local Catholic school in Grand Bassam and later at the Ecole William Ponty. He worked for the French government in Dakar, Senegal, at the Institut français d’Afrique noire. In 1947, he returned to Côte d'Ivoire and joined the movement for independence. Before the country gained independence in 1960, he was held for sixteen months because he participated in protests against the French colonial government.

Dadié’s writing was inspired by his childhood experiences with colonialism. He tried to connect the messages of traditional African folktales with the modern world. In 1953, he helped start the Cercle Culturel et Folklorique de la Côte d'Ivoire (CCFCI) with Germain Coffi Gadeau and F. J. Amon d'Aby. In 1955, he published a book called The Black Cloth: A Collection of African Folktales in French.

Dadié was rediscovered when Steven Spielberg’s 1997 movie Amistad, which includes music by American composer John Williams, was released. The choral text of Dadié’s poem, “Dry Your Tears, Afrika” (“Sèche Tes Pleurs”), was used for a song with the same name. The poem, published in 1967, describes returning home to Africa.

Dadié was the brother of politician Hortense Aka-Anghui. He turned 100 in January 2016 and passed away in Abidjan in March 2019 at the age of 103.

Awards

Dadié received many awards to honor his work as a writer. One of the most recent awards was the Grand Prix des Mécènes from the GPLA in 2016.