"At the end of the morning, another little house that smells very bad in a very narrow street, a tiny house that houses in its bowels of rotten wood dozens of rats and the turbulence of my six brothers and sisters, a cruel little house whose intransigence dulled our end of the month and my fantastic father nibbled of a single misery, I never knew which, that an unforeseeable sorcery drows in melancholy tenderness or exalts in high flames of anger; and my mother whose legs for our tireless hunger pedal, pedal day, night, I am even awakened at night by those legs tireless that cycle the night and the bite hard in the soft flesh of the night of a Singer that my mother pedal, pedal for our hunger and day and night. "

This poetic work is one of the starting points of negritude. Aimé Césaire will continue his denunciation of racism and colonialism with his Discourse on Colonialism.

"My negritude is not a stone, its deafness rush against the clamor of the day
my negritude is not a dead watercover on the dead eye of the earth
my negritude is neither a tower nor a cathedral "

"As there are men-hyenas and men-
panthers, I'll be a Jewish man
a man-cafe
a Hindu-man from Calcutta
a man-of-Harlem-who-does-not-vote
man-famine, man-insult, man-torture
you could grab it at any time
blows, kill him - perfectly kill him - without having
accountable to anyone without having an apology to anyone
a Jewish man
a man-pogrom
a puppy
a beggar »