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Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the Americas (MELA)
A Long Way From Home (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the Americas
Claude McKay (1889–1948) was one of the most prolific and sophisticated African American writers of the early twentieth century. A Jamaican-born author of poetry, short stories, novels, and nonfiction, McKay has often been associated with the “New Negro” or Harlem Renaissance, a movement of African American art, culture, and intellectualism between World War I and the Great Depression. But his relationship to the movement was complex. Literally absent from Harlem during that period, he devoted most of his time to traveling through Europe, Russia, and Africa during the 1920s and 1930s. His active participation in Communist groups and the radical Left also encouraged certain opinions on race and class that strained his relationship to the Harlem Renaissance and its black intelligentsia. In his 1937 autobiography, A Long Way from Home , McKay explains what it means to be a black “rebel sojourner” and presents one of the first unflattering, yet informative, exposés of the Harlem Renaissance. Reprinted here with a critical introduction by Gene Andrew Jarrett, this book will challenge readers to rethink McKay’s articulation of identity, art, race, and politics and situate these topics in terms of his oeuvre and his literary contemporaries between the world wars.
270 pages, Paperback
First published March 25, 2007
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About the author
Claude McKay
122 books242 followersJamaican-born American writer Claude McKay figured prominently in the Harlem renaissance of the 1920s; his works include collections of poetry, such as
Constab Ballads
(1912), and novels, including
Home to Harlem
(1928).
Home to Harlem, a best-seller, won Festus Claudius McKay, a poet and a seminal figure, the Harmon gold award for literature.
He also wrote novels Banjo and Banana Bottom . People not yet published his manuscript, called Amiable with Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem , of 1941.
McKay also authored collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, Gingertown . He authored two autobiographical books, A Long Way from Home and My Green Hills of Jamaica , published posthumously. He entitled a non-fiction, socio-historical treatise Harlem: Negro Metropolis . People published his poetry collection, Harlem Shadows , in 1922 among the first books during the Harlem renaissance. Survivors published his Selected Poems posthumously in 1953.
Home to Harlem, a best-seller, won Festus Claudius McKay, a poet and a seminal figure, the Harmon gold award for literature.
He also wrote novels Banjo and Banana Bottom . People not yet published his manuscript, called Amiable with Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem , of 1941.
McKay also authored collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, Gingertown . He authored two autobiographical books, A Long Way from Home and My Green Hills of Jamaica , published posthumously. He entitled a non-fiction, socio-historical treatise Harlem: Negro Metropolis . People published his poetry collection, Harlem Shadows , in 1922 among the first books during the Harlem renaissance. Survivors published his Selected Poems posthumously in 1953.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 25, 2023
I have always been an admirer of Claude McKay. Not only for the content of his work, which is lyrical and so evocative of its era, but also because in an era where being a black intellectual in particular, you were more often than not forced to choose sides.
You could write for or pander to white audiences or you could shun them completely such as men like W.E.B DuBois chose to do.
To say nothing to devalue the achievements of DuBois who was a brilliant, if not humorless man, McKay refused to allow his work to follow this dichotomy. He brought a joy to his writing which reflected his experience.
Sometimes that experience reflected well on black society and was considered empowering. Other times he wrote of drunks, pimps, criminals, and womanizers.
For McKay, who worked as a longshoreman, cool, and railroad porter, these were the me. And women he knew best. To not write about them out of a sense of not betraying his “race” was anathema to him.
In his private life, McKay was very political and vocal about racial injustice in America. In his novels however, he wrote of what he knew and what he saw in spite of the opprobrium of other black intellectuals.
I wonder often what McKay would think of our racial politics today. I think McKay would be shocked, and perhaps encouraged by the progress we have made as a society even if he would be disappointed at just how much further we have to go. I think as well he would see echoes of the racial separatism that he rejected during his era and tell us, particularly when it comes to art, to express what we want to express, and say what needs to be said, but never be so dogmatic as to lose sight of the simple joys of living.
You could write for or pander to white audiences or you could shun them completely such as men like W.E.B DuBois chose to do.
To say nothing to devalue the achievements of DuBois who was a brilliant, if not humorless man, McKay refused to allow his work to follow this dichotomy. He brought a joy to his writing which reflected his experience.
Sometimes that experience reflected well on black society and was considered empowering. Other times he wrote of drunks, pimps, criminals, and womanizers.
For McKay, who worked as a longshoreman, cool, and railroad porter, these were the me. And women he knew best. To not write about them out of a sense of not betraying his “race” was anathema to him.
In his private life, McKay was very political and vocal about racial injustice in America. In his novels however, he wrote of what he knew and what he saw in spite of the opprobrium of other black intellectuals.
I wonder often what McKay would think of our racial politics today. I think McKay would be shocked, and perhaps encouraged by the progress we have made as a society even if he would be disappointed at just how much further we have to go. I think as well he would see echoes of the racial separatism that he rejected during his era and tell us, particularly when it comes to art, to express what we want to express, and say what needs to be said, but never be so dogmatic as to lose sight of the simple joys of living.
February 14, 2017
This is the autobiography of the Jamaican-born poet and novelist Claude McKay, whose Collected Poetry I read and very much enjoyed last month. If anything, this autobiography was even better. It begins a couple years after he arrived in the United States; there is nothing beyond a few isolated recollections about his earlier life in Jamaica. He has left college and is working as a waiter on a railway car, and has just received an invitation to visit the editor Frank Harris to discuss publication of his poetry. The second part discusses his visit to England, where he is introduced to radical labor and Marxist literature and works for a time at Sylvia Pankhurst's publication, The Worker's Dreadnought; the third part deals with his return to Harlem and his collaboration on Max Eastman's The Liberator.
The fourth and most interesting part deals with his visit in 1922-23 to the new Soviet Union. He attends the Fourth Congress of the Communist International -- he is there as a poet, not a delegate, and never joined the Communist Party. McKay clearly has no use for either the British or American CP delegates; it's very clear that the only American CP leader he has any respect for is James P. Cannon. After the Congress, he travels in the USSR speaking but mostly observing. The descriptions of the Soviet Union under Lenin are extremely interesting, from the viewpoint of a person who is sympathetic to the Revolution but also not uncritical; there is neither the uncritical enthusiasm of the Communist visitors nor the denunciations of the bourgeois visitors, but a very profound observation of what was actually happening. He meets three of what he calls the "Big Four", Trotsky, Radek and Zinoviev -- Lenin was already ill and unavailable to visitors. It is interesting that after the Congress and having been in Russia for several months, someone points Stalin out to him, and he admits he's never heard of him (so much for his "leading role" at the time). He contrasts Trotsky's intelligent estimation of the American Blacks with the ignorance, sometimes bordering on racism, of many of the other leaders; Trotsky sends him on a several month tour of the Red Army and Navy.
From the USSR, he goes to Berlin, then to France, Spain, and Morocco; altogether he spends twelve years writing and traveling abroad before returning to the United States. The autobiography ends just before his return. There is a brief last chapter in which he indicates his opinions on the way forward for the American Black movement, emphasizing a Black nationalist perspective (though rejecting as nonsense the idea of a Black state in the South) with Blacks organizing independently of white "friends", and distinguishes between forced segregation of society and all-Black organizations in the communities (this was an unheard of position in the 30s, although it later became an accepted view in the Black movement of the 60's).
Considering that he praises Trotsky and Cannon in a book written about 1934 and published in 1937, it is no surprise that he became anathema to the Stalinists, and the bitterness of his relations with them would later lead him to a more anticommunist position, although unlike many anticommunists of the time he never turned to supporting capitalism, or abandoned his support for the Black and workers movements -- even after converting to Catholicism at the end of his life, his association was with the Catholic Workers Movement of Dorothy Day. But this was all later than the time of the autobiography.
The fourth and most interesting part deals with his visit in 1922-23 to the new Soviet Union. He attends the Fourth Congress of the Communist International -- he is there as a poet, not a delegate, and never joined the Communist Party. McKay clearly has no use for either the British or American CP delegates; it's very clear that the only American CP leader he has any respect for is James P. Cannon. After the Congress, he travels in the USSR speaking but mostly observing. The descriptions of the Soviet Union under Lenin are extremely interesting, from the viewpoint of a person who is sympathetic to the Revolution but also not uncritical; there is neither the uncritical enthusiasm of the Communist visitors nor the denunciations of the bourgeois visitors, but a very profound observation of what was actually happening. He meets three of what he calls the "Big Four", Trotsky, Radek and Zinoviev -- Lenin was already ill and unavailable to visitors. It is interesting that after the Congress and having been in Russia for several months, someone points Stalin out to him, and he admits he's never heard of him (so much for his "leading role" at the time). He contrasts Trotsky's intelligent estimation of the American Blacks with the ignorance, sometimes bordering on racism, of many of the other leaders; Trotsky sends him on a several month tour of the Red Army and Navy.
From the USSR, he goes to Berlin, then to France, Spain, and Morocco; altogether he spends twelve years writing and traveling abroad before returning to the United States. The autobiography ends just before his return. There is a brief last chapter in which he indicates his opinions on the way forward for the American Black movement, emphasizing a Black nationalist perspective (though rejecting as nonsense the idea of a Black state in the South) with Blacks organizing independently of white "friends", and distinguishes between forced segregation of society and all-Black organizations in the communities (this was an unheard of position in the 30s, although it later became an accepted view in the Black movement of the 60's).
Considering that he praises Trotsky and Cannon in a book written about 1934 and published in 1937, it is no surprise that he became anathema to the Stalinists, and the bitterness of his relations with them would later lead him to a more anticommunist position, although unlike many anticommunists of the time he never turned to supporting capitalism, or abandoned his support for the Black and workers movements -- even after converting to Catholicism at the end of his life, his association was with the Catholic Workers Movement of Dorothy Day. But this was all later than the time of the autobiography.
December 29, 2023
Totally fascinating book! Originally published in 1937, it documents an extraordinary life of literary and political activity, and the big names encountered would take too long to list. Compelling as many of those stories are, much of the book's interest comes from the author's life among less famous folk. I'm now curious to read his fiction, and to read more about him as well.
This kind of book is like time travel. The author offers a contemporary perspective from someone who is there at the outset of Hemingway's career, for example, including his reflections on Hemingway from a decade later. His simultaneously insider/outsider take on the Harlem Renaissance is surely unique, as is his access to early Bolshevik leaders during his visit to revolutionary Russia in the years before Lenin's death.
Picked this up at Fabulosa bookstore in SF, this edition is old enough to be pre-ISBN, so I'm not surprised there's no cover image in Goodreads (it's the same photo as on the cover of the Pluto edition, where's he's all bundled up to fly from Petrograd to Kronstadt in 1923).
P.S. Just read the introduction to McKay's novel, Romance in Marseille, and learned that the Senghor mentioned in this book is not the one I thought, so I revised this review.
This kind of book is like time travel. The author offers a contemporary perspective from someone who is there at the outset of Hemingway's career, for example, including his reflections on Hemingway from a decade later. His simultaneously insider/outsider take on the Harlem Renaissance is surely unique, as is his access to early Bolshevik leaders during his visit to revolutionary Russia in the years before Lenin's death.
Picked this up at Fabulosa bookstore in SF, this edition is old enough to be pre-ISBN, so I'm not surprised there's no cover image in Goodreads (it's the same photo as on the cover of the Pluto edition, where's he's all bundled up to fly from Petrograd to Kronstadt in 1923).
P.S. Just read the introduction to McKay's novel, Romance in Marseille, and learned that the Senghor mentioned in this book is not the one I thought, so I revised this review.
March 17, 2020
Claude McKay is that dude! I will admit some of his ideas don't hold up almost a century later, and also there are a plethora of times in this autobiography where he simply neglects to tell you his thoughts (like, there will be dialogue of someone else speaking, and McKay doesn't even tell you if he agrees or disagrees with the person!), but...Claude McKay is that dude!
August 26, 2019
Oh boy, Claude, tell it like it is!! From the perspective of the 1920s and 30s, the expatriate experience in Europe and Africa is a tour de' force of art and literary and low down life - a masterpiece.
September 20, 2023
4.5 stars (when will Goodreads introduce half stars fr!!!)
"I think all people are interesting to write about."
This is a genuinely fascinating autobiography about writing and political life - the only reason I didn't get through it faster is because I had to catch up on other (much more boring, medieval) uni work. But Mckay's life is an admirable one, and the way he found space for himself and others who found themselves frequently without a voice in society through the writing community is so inspiring. He seems to have been everywhere, at politically critical moments: in England when the suffragists and trade unions were organizing radical protests; in Russia when Lenin was first coming to power; and in America, for the most part, contributing to radical minority-led literary magazines and writing poetry and meeting with so many amazing writers of the period and using writing as his method of protesting the insidious, brutal racism of the early 1900s (much of which still persists today...).
There is so much to say about this book, and I can't fit it all into a Goodreads review. But what I can do is implore you to read it, and leave you with this poem of his:
If We Must Die
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
"I think all people are interesting to write about."
This is a genuinely fascinating autobiography about writing and political life - the only reason I didn't get through it faster is because I had to catch up on other (much more boring, medieval) uni work. But Mckay's life is an admirable one, and the way he found space for himself and others who found themselves frequently without a voice in society through the writing community is so inspiring. He seems to have been everywhere, at politically critical moments: in England when the suffragists and trade unions were organizing radical protests; in Russia when Lenin was first coming to power; and in America, for the most part, contributing to radical minority-led literary magazines and writing poetry and meeting with so many amazing writers of the period and using writing as his method of protesting the insidious, brutal racism of the early 1900s (much of which still persists today...).
There is so much to say about this book, and I can't fit it all into a Goodreads review. But what I can do is implore you to read it, and leave you with this poem of his:
If We Must Die
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
December 12, 2011
An extraordinary life told in wonderful prose. I especially enjoyed the portions on McKay's time in Russia and Africa. Now I think I need to go re-watch Reds to see if a character based on Mckay showed up at all.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews