While many visitors to Martinique regard it for its beauty and the fruits of its labor — think: lush gardens, world-class rum, and award-winning chocolate — the most captivating aspect of the French territory is the people.
Martinique has long produced Black artists, musicians, wordsmiths, and activists committed to embodying the distinct experience of being a Black minority in a French society. After chatting with a few locals, you’ll quickly discover that while people officially refer to Martinique as the “Island of Flowers,” it is unofficially an island of passionate creators.
There’s certainly something in the water in the best way in this creativity-inducing paradise. Poet and politician, the late Aimé Césaire is one of the most famous figures as a founder of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature. Martinican psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon has been described as “the most influential anticolonial thinker of his time.” Alpha Jenny was a performer whose singing landed her alongside Duke Ellington and Josephine Baker. Jenny’s acting abilities also led to roles in over a hundred theater productions and movies.
But alongside the Martinican-born icons whose legacies remain in their absence, the island continues to honor its living legends. A destination every creator and inspired person should bask in at least once, meet the living island icons of Martinique.