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...