Winters is a freelance writer who has written for a wide variety of academic and educational publishers. In the following essay, she discusses issues of race and heritage in "A Far Cry from Africa."

In "A Far Cry from Africa," Walcott writes about the bloody war of African against European during the Mau Mau Rebellion, when members of local tribes, particularly the Kikuyu, rebelled against the British seizure of their land. The poem opens with graphic lines describing the blood and brutality of conflict; as if these descriptions were not enough, Walcott makes it clear that this is an unnecessary war, describing it as "a dirty cause."

Walcott saw his own life mirrored in this larger conflict, because he was of mixed African and European ancestry and thus felt an ancestral connection of loyalty to both sides involved in the conflict. As he writes in the poem...