Claude McKay

"Buried in the archive for almost ninety years, Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille traces the adventures of a rowdy troupe of dockworkers, prostitutes, and political organizers--collectively straight and queer, disabled and able-bodied, African, European, Caribbean, and American. Set largely in the culture-blending Vieux Port of Marseille at the height of the Jazz Age, the novel takes flight along with Lafala, an acutely disabled but abruptly wealthy West African sailor"--

Romance in Marseille

With sensual, often brutal accuracy, Claude McKay traces the parallel paths of two very different young men struggling to find their way through the suspicion and prejudice of American society. At the same time, this stark but moving story touches on the central themes of the Harlem Renaissance, including the urgent need for unity and identity among blacks.

Home to Harlem

The unexpected discovery in 2012 of a completed manuscript of Claude McKay's final novel was hailed by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as 'a major event which dramatically expands the canon of novels written by Harlem Renaissance writers'. Building on the already extraordinary legacy of McKay's life and work, this colourful, dramatic novel centres on the effort by Harlem intelligentsia to organize support for the liberation of Mussolini-occupied Ethiopia, a crucial but largely forgotten event in American history. At once a penetrating satire of political machinations in Depression-era Harlem and a far-reaching story of global intrigue and romance, Amiable with Big Teeth plunges into the concerns, anxieties, hopes and dreams of African-Americans at a moment of crisis for the soul of Harlem.

A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem

Amiable with Big Teeth

A harbinger of the Harlem Renaissance first published in 1922, this collection of poignant, lyrical poems explores Claude McKay’s yearning for his Jamaican homeland and the bitter plight of Black and African Caribbean people in America—now with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Jericho Brown. With pure heart, passion, and honesty, Claude McKay offers an acute reflection on the complex nature of racial identity in the Caribbean diaspora, encompassing issues such as nationalism, freedom of expression, class, gender, and sex. The collection’s eponymous poem, “Harlem Shadows,” portrays the struggle of sex workers in 1920s Harlem. In “If We Must Die,” McKay calls for justice and retribution for Black people in the face of racist abuse. Juxtaposing the cacophony of New York City with the serene beauty of Jamaica, McKay urges us to reckon with the oppression that plagues a “long-suffering race,” who he argues has no home in a white man’s world. Poems of Blackness, queerness, desire, performance, and love are infused with a radical message of resistance in this sonorous cry for universal human rights. Simultaneously a love letter to the spirit of New York City and an indictment of its harsh cruelty, Harlem Shadows is a stunning collection that remains all too relevant one hundred years after its original publication.

Poems

Harlem Shadows

Joan R. Sherman

A collection of poems by Claude McKay, one of the first poets of the Harlem Renaissance.

Selected Poems

Lincoln 'Banjo' Daily doesn't see what slavery has to do with music. He plays the banjo because he likes to. He is just one of a colony of drifters who have settled on the tough waterfront of Marseilles in the 1920s. They panhandle by day, and at night do the rounds of the brawling bistros. They drink, look for women, dance, play music, make love and fight, and they talk about their homes in Senegal, the Caribbean and the United States: about Garvey's 'back-to-Africa' movement, and about being black. A journey which leads some of them to discovering their African roots and a sense of belonging to a race 'weighed, tested and poised in the universal scheme'.

Banjo

The complete works of previously unpublished and published poetry of a pioneer of modern black writing

Complete Poems

Written in the late 1940s but unpublished till now, this superb portrayal of Black life during the Great Depression and the New Deal is virtually a sequel to the classic Home to Harlem. Mckay's vivid, warm evocations of the omnipresent numbers racket, all-night jazz parties and the whole exuberant and cacophonous clash of social movements and ideologies - Black nationalism and industrial unionism as well as incipient Muslim and other heterodox religious formations - provide the context for a fast-paced narrative of love, work, play and revolt in Black America during one of the most stirring periods in US history. Astutely sensitive to the extraordinary vitality and diversity of Black culture, and drawing on the author's experiences in the IWW and the extreme Left of the socialist movement, Harlem Glory reveals Claude McKay at his very best.

A Fragment of Aframerican Life

Harlem Glory

After seven years of English schooling, Bita Plant has difficulty returning to the primitive life-style of her native Jamaican village

Banana Bottom

If We Must Die has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

The Essential Claude McKay

If We Must Die

Winston James

James Shaver Woodsworth

Analyzes the themes and politics of the early Jamaican works of poet Claude McKay, known for his works on the African Diaspora; explores his use of Jamaican creole; and collects early poems and a comic sketch about Jamaican peasant life.

Claude McKay's Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion

A Fierce Hatred of Injustice

This is a full-length novel written by Claude McKay in 1933-34, in the same key as the episodic Banjo, but for which he was never able to find a publisher. Richard Bradbury, who discovered the manuscript in New York, provides a critical introduction.

Romance in Marseille and Three Short Stories

And Five Jamaican Short Stories

My Green Hills of Jamaica

Dialect story of Negro longshoreman's experiences in Marseilles.

A Story Without a Plot

Gingertown

A Jamaican girl, Bita Plant, who was adopted and sent to be educated in England by white missionary benefactors, returns to her native village of Banana Bottom and finds her black heritage at war with her newly acquired culture.

A Novel

First published in 1928 in the US, now public domain. 'Why did I want to mix myself up in a white folk's war? It ain't ever was any of black folks' affair'. When Jake Brown joined the World War I effort, he was treated more like a slave than a soldier. After briefly defecting to France to escape the racial violence he was facing, Jake travelled back home to Harlem. But despite the distance he travelled, Jake cannot seem to escape the past and the explosive ways in which it can culminate in every aspect of his life. Written with brutal accuracy, Home to Harlem is the debut novel by one the first significant writers of the Harlem Renaissance. 'One of the most gifted writers of the Harlem Renaissance'--Washington Post

In the early 1900s, Bita Plant returns to Jamaica after seven years of European education to live with Malcolm and Priscilla Craig - the white missionary benefactors who helped her become a cultivated young woman. They have Bita's future mapped out: training at the mission and marrying a dedicated theological student. Reluctant to accept this fate, she is drawn back to the festivals, superstitious faith and passionate love affairs of her West Indian culture. Such antics are not deemed fitting for a refined lady and Bita must choose between the evangelical guidance of the Craigs and the sensual vitality of her roots. First published in 1933, the richly lyrical Banana Bottom is often regarded as McKay's finest novel. His innovation lies in the directness with which he speaks of social and political injustice for Afro-Caribbeans and in his choice of the working class as his focus. Claude McKay was an instrumental figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Claude McKay

Books

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