As a new agent in the Senegalese literary field, who was initially excluded by intellectual and editorial circles, and an opponent to Negritude and Senghor’s politics, Ousmane Sembène was not able to produce a proper paratext about his work. After having shown Sembène’s editorial trajectory, this article analyses the rhetorical strategies that transform the peritext and the text itself into spaces which enable Sembène to legitimize his work and present himself as a popular writer.