Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay

by Shanna Greene Benjamin

Nellie Y. McKay (1930–2006) was a pivotal figure in contemporary American letters. The author of several books, McKay is best known for coediting the canon-making Norton Anthology of African American Literature with Henry Louis Gates Jr., which helped secure a place for the scholarly study of Black writing that had been ignored by white academia. However, there is more to McKay's life and legacy than her literary scholarship. After her passing, new details about McKay's life emerged, surprising everyone who knew her. Why did McKay choose to hide so many details of her past? Shanna Greene Benjamin examines McKay's path through the professoriate to learn about the strategies, sacrifices, and successes of contemporary Black women in the American academy. Benjamin shows that McKay's secrecy was a necessary tactic that a Black, working-class woman had to employ to succeed in the white-dominated space of the American English department. Using extensive archives and personal correspondence, Benjamin brings together McKay's private life and public work to expand how we think about Black literary history and the place of Black women in American culture.

Genres: Biography

280 pages, Hardcover

First published April 12, 2021

Reviews

[Elizabeth Higginbotham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay by Shanna Greene Benjamin is a wonderful exploration of a life in the academy. I know McKay and we traveled professional paths, but mine was very different, but in terms of my age and the professional choices that I made. Reading Half in Shadow made we aware of the different challenges African American women faced making innovations in English and Modern Language as compared with Sociology. I watched McKay from afar, but our paths crossed many times. I initially met her at Cambridge, when she was studying at Harvard and I was at Brandeis.

Later in our careers, I saw her several times in Madison, when she was on the faculty of U. Wisconsin. However, I never knew we were both New Yorkers and graduates of different branches of the City University of New York. Like me, McKay developed a support group of Black women in her field to aid each other as they navigated the Ivory Tower and worked to create space for people to follow. Her goal was to really integrate the contributions of African Americans into American Literature. She did so and many of her students have continued that quest.

I have appreciated McKay’s contributions, but Benjamin has put them in a larger framework for me. I also understand more about the challenges of being in a research-intensive institution. I started in one, but carve out another path that involved collaboration in another context. I think reading this book would help young scholars of color understand the terrain, the work that people who came before them did to create bridges, and also encourage them to be true to themselves.

[J. Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovingly written biography of Nellie Y. McKay - a pathbreaking scholar in African American literary studies and Black Feminist writing. Benjamin writes as a scholar herself but also as a mentee of McKay’s and blends in her own experiences in small vignettes that demonstrate the kind of particularity that is centered in Black feminist work. McKay’s difficult path through academia, her work on the groundbreaking Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and her many essays are all covered, as well as her choice to obscure some of the truths about her life - a discovery some of her closest friends made only after her death. Benjamin has written not just a singular biography but provided a history of the theoretical and intimate world making of Black women writers in the 1970s and 1980s as they supported each other in birthing a field. Loved this.

[Rachel Afi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a beautifully crafted biography. It is a pleasure to see the author position herself in the text as she explains for us the complicated journey of her mentor through academia. It is a skillful biography. I was compelled through the first half of the book by the mystery of McKay's hidden past, and then moved through the second half of the book learning all of the people she was connected to and how she impacted them and her field. The text is specific to a Black woman's journey in academia and the institutions that McKay broke open and the challenges she faced in white institutions extremely effectively contextualized by Benjamin. I am so grateful to have this book exist and to know McKay so much more because of it. It is a moving and all around wonderful read.

[Theresa]

A fascinating biography, blended with a bit of memoir.

[Tameka Fleming · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know what it was about this book that caught my attention, especially since I never heard of Nellie McKay. This book was in my local library. Author Shanna Greene Benjamin worked on this project for her professoriate. It is light on facts and personal stories about McKay still I would recommend it.
Benjamin does fill the pages with stories about her own life to make up for the wholes that are missing in McKay's story.
When reading this book, it reminded me of a bio I read about Blues singer Billie Holliday. The biographer kept giving you details about Holliday then would contradict them or have someone else say that they were false. This book was the same situation. Benjamin would share a story then say she found no evidence or could not confirm that it ever happened. So, I'm not sure if she should have written this book or not.
It does seem like given the fact that only McKay's daughter and one close friend would participate in this project, she was not able to confirm much about her personal life.
The story is mostly about McKay's professional life, which was an easier task. Her personal life is non existent in this book. She magically had two children and was married and divorced. Then she portrayed herself as a single woman [allowing people to believe her daughter was her sister] to be an attractive candidate for a professorship.
McKay and her daughter were accepted into Harvard the same year for graduate and undergrad studies, respectively; the monumental moment was not celebrated because McKay portrayed a different version of herself in her college and professional life. Obviously, McKay and her daughter have their reasons for why they lived their lives the way they did. Still, I need to say it was a shame.