SOURCE: "Pigments—A Dialogue with Self," in Critical Perspectives on Léon-Gontran Damas, edited by Keith Q. Warner, Three Continents Press, 1988, pp. 99-110.

Hurley is a Barbadian educator and critic. In the following essay, which was originally published in the journal Black Images in 1974, he interprets Pigments as an internal dialogue.

It is understandable that it has been the practice to identify Léon Damas, the author of Pigments, as one of the leaders, along with Césaire and Senghor, of the Négritude movement. It is beyond question that the orientation of his first collection of poetry, published in 1937, around the themes of color and race, assimilation and colonization, as well as his expressed support of the ideals of Négritude lend weight to such a claim. It is true, too, that, like Césaire and Senghor, he demonstrated that his commitment to the principle of black...