Surrealism as a movement has always resisted the efforts of critics to confine it to any static definition--surrealists themselves have always preferred to speak of it in terms of dynamics,
dialectics, goals, and struggles. Accordingly, surrealist groups have always encouraged and exemplified the widest diversity--from its start the movement was emphatically opposed to racism and
colonialism, and it embraced thinkers from every race and nation. Yet in the vast critical literature on surrealism, all but a few black poets have been invisible. Academic histories and
anthologies typically, but very wrongly, persist in conveying surrealism as an all-white movement, like other ＂artistic schools＂ of European origin. In glaring contrast, the many publications
of the international surrealist movement have regularly featured texts and reproductions of works by comrades from Martinique, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, South America, the United States, and
other lands. Some of these publications are readily available to researchers; others are not, and a few fall outside academia’s narrow definition of surrealism. This collection is the first to
document the extensive participation of people of African descent in the international surrealist movement over the past seventy-five years. Editors Franklin Rosemont and Robin D. G. Kelley aim
to introduce readers to the black, brown, and beige surrealists of the world--to provide sketches of their overlooked lives and deeds as well as their important place in history, especially the
history of surrealism.
