Overview

A collection of private correspondence from one of the Harlem Renaissance's brightest and most radical voices The Jamaican-born, queer author Claude McKay (1890–1948) was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. His 1919 poem ""If We Must Die"" expressed a revolutionary vision for militant Black protest art, while his novels, including Home to Harlem, Banjo, and Banana Bottom, described ordinary Black life in lyrical prose. Yet for all that McKay connected himself to Harlem, he was a restless world traveler who sought spiritual, artistic, and political sustenance in France, Spain, Moscow, and Morocco. Brooks E. Hefner and Gary Edward Holcomb bring together two decades of McKay's never-before-published dispatches from the road with correspondents including W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Max Eastman, and Louise Bryant. With wit, wisdom, insight, and sometimes irascible temper, McKay describes how he endured harassment from British authorities in London and worked alongside Leon Trotsky and Alexander Kerensky in Bolshevik Moscow. He reflects on Paris's Lost Generation, immerses himself in the Marseille dockers' noir subculture, and observes French colonialism in Morocco. Providing a new perspective on a unique figure of American modernism, this collection reveals McKay gossiping, cajoling, and confiding as he engages in spirited debates and challenges the political and artistic questions of the day.

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9780300276473

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Reviews

“Presents a rare and irascible, brilliant and lovable figure—Claude McKay. Lush, expansive, witty, astounding, these letters open vistas of an interconnected world, taking readers from the Caribbean and the US to London, Moscow, Marseille, Barcelona, and Tangier.”—Ernest J. Mitchell, Yale University “The publication of this long-awaited volume of McKay’s vagabond correspondence is a major event. It will be an indispensable companion to his poetry and fiction and a key resource for readers of African diasporic modernism.”—Brent Hayes Edwards, author of The Practice of Diaspora “Lively, engaging, gripping. McKay’s personality, with its famous irascibility and acidity, shines through, as does an unexpected warmth and loyalty. A figure of enduring fascination for years to come.”—Melissa Barton, Yale University

Author Information

Claude McKay (1890–1948) was a luminary of the Harlem Renaissance and a major figure in Black transnational, Black queer, and Black Marxist history. His books include the poetry collection Harlem Shadows and the novels Home to Harlem and Banjo and the posthumously published Amiable with Big Teeth and Romance in Marseille. Brooks E. Hefner is professor of English at James Madison University. He is the author of The Word on the Streets: The American Language of Vernacular Modernism and Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow. He lives in Charlottesville, VA. Gary Edward Holcomb is professor of African American literature at Ohio University. He is the author of Claude McKay, Code Name Sasha: Queer Black Marxism and the Harlem Renaissance and coeditor of McKay’s Romance in Marseille. He lives in Athens, OH.

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