Birago Diop was a poet based in Senegalese, Africa, formerly Dakar, French West Africa. He wrote poetry and recorded the folktales and lore of his tribe, the Wolof people. He studied veterinary medicine at the Univerity of Toulouse, and after did a number of tours as a government veterinary surgeon in French Sudam, now Mali, as well as in Cote d Ivoire, Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, and Mauritania. He was Sengals ambassador to Tusnia between 1961 and 1965. His poetry is lyrical and beautifully written, however, he composed only a small amount. In his collection Leurres et lueurs, he examines the mystique of African life. He received awards for Les Contes d’Amadou Koumba, Les Nouveaux Contes d’Amadou Koumba ,and Contes et lavanes. The tales in these books were first told to him by his family’s griot, a person whose role is to preserve the tribe’s and family’s oral tradition. His other works include Les Contes d’Awa and his autobiography La Plume raboutée.
Information from The Encyclopedia Britannica.
