Guillén asks about his "other" name—the Mandinga, Bantu, or Yoruba name that should have been his.
Nada más. Es el cuento. ¿Y mi abuela? ¡Mi abuela, de un barco portugués, con un verdoso acento! ¿Y el hambre? ¡El hambre! ¿Y el viaje? ¡El viaje!... El Apellido Nicolas Guillen English Translation
When you read “The Last Name” in English, you are not reading a lesser poem. You are reading a poem that has crossed the ocean twice—once with the enslaved, and once with the poet’s ghost. And in that crossing, the question remains as urgent as ever: Where does your name really come from? Guillén asks about his "other" name—the Mandinga, Bantu,
The poem’s most powerful moment comes when Guillén rejects the European surname altogether. In Spanish: ¿Y mi abuela
My Black grandfather, dead, with a bandana around his neck, slips into memory... His lands were a lost and sad voice, which rose from his chest.
Discuss the of the "Negritude" movement that influenced this poem.