Birago Diop

Birago Diop
Sketch of Birago Diop
Background information
Birth name	Birago Ismaël Diop
Born	11 December 1906 Ouakam, Dakar, French West Africa
Origin	Wolof
Died	25 November 1989 (aged 82) Dakar, Senegal
Occupation(s)	Poet, Storyteller, Veterinarian, Diplomat

Birago Diop (11 December 1906 - 25 November 1989) was a Senegalese poet and storyteller whose work restored general interest in African folktales and promoted him to one of the most outstanding African francophone writers. A renowned veterinarian, diplomat and leading voice of the Négritude literary movement, Diop exemplified the "African renaissance man."

Son of Ismael and Sokhna Diop, Birago Diop was born on 11 December 1906 in Ouakam, a neighborhood in Dakar. His mother raised him with his two older brothers, Massyla and Youssoupha; his father, for unknown reasons, disappeared two months before Diop was born. Diop's childhood exposed him to many folktales which he later used in his literary work.

In 1920, Diop earned a scholarship to attend the French-speaking school Lycée Faidherbe in Saint-Louis, which was then Senegal's capital. During this time, he became fascinated with the poems and style of writing of Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe and several others and began writing his own. In the late 1920s, he served as a nurse in a military hospital and later went on to study veterinary medicine at the University of Toulouse in France, graduating in 1933.

Although he was mostly recognized for his poems and folktales, Birago Diop also worked as a veterinary surgeon for the French colonial government in several West African countries, spending 1937- 1939 in the French Sudan (now Mali), 1940 in the Ivory Coast and French Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), and 1950 in Mauritania. Throughout his civil service career in 1934, he collected and reworked Wolof folktales, and also wrote poetry, memoirs, and a play. He also served as the first Senegalese ambassador to Tunisia from 1960 to 1965.