Home to Harlem

by Claude McKay, Wayne F. Cooper (Foreword)

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.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, African American, Novels, Historical Fiction, Race, American

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

Jamaican-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.

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

First published in 1928, this is the tale of a disgruntled Afro-American soldier going AWOL in France and then London, but who feels drawn to the chaotic urban life of Harlem, to which he eventually returns. Very interesting read, and take on the alienation and frustrations caused by social intimidation and implied inferiority. 5 out of 12, Three Star read, as the topics and themes are what kept me reading and not the plotting and characterisations.

[Phillip Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this book featured in the Great American Paperback and was curious about what it was all about. The main character Jake Brown ships out to France in the first world war to find Jim Crow is also coming with him courtesy of President Wilson. Doing menial jobs for the Army is not what he signed up for and he deserts to live life in England but later longs to return to the exciting life in Harlem. The book was panned by W.E.D. Dubois as an unrealistic portrayal of Negro life but Claude McKay should be respected for his artistic integrity in telling the truth. Harlem in the roaring twenties had gambling, drinking, prostitution, violence, and so did some white communities. The main character is basically a decent guy who won't be a scab worker or beat a girlfriend who sees a beating as a sign of affection. There is also some friction between lighter skin high yellows and darker skin blacks that regard them as no good moochers. Harlem is not all bad in the novel since you have artists, hard working men, and others trying to live in a white man's world.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

1920s Harlem comes alive, with a soupcon of the sentimental, in this classic of the Renaissance—a throbbing, sweating, pulsating account of life before the Great Crash.

[Vevine Goldson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Claude McKay's book home to Harlem is depictive of entertainment fun and harships of life growing up black in america during the 1920s. As communities and families struggle to survive while keeping up with turbulent political changes,the author hopes and dreams of unity among his people. A classic with themes of romance friendships class and racial identity.

[Sasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Claude McKay was a defining poet of the Harlem Renaissance; he was somewhat less great at writing novels, but this one is pretty good.

There was a central conflict between the major players in the Harlem Renaissance. Some, following Alain Locke and his landmark anthology The New Negro, were concerned with what black folks might be; they advocated education to uplift the race. Others were more concerned with just talking about what black people were right now. They were led by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, among others, and they called themselves the "Niggerati," which is a great name for a band that doesn't have me in it, and I'm going to refer to them as Hurston's gang for the rest of this review.

More Awesome Names For Bands I'm Not In
The Vagina Monster Hogs
Klezmerotica
Chumbawumba

The two groups occasionally came into conflict because the, let's call them the New Negroes thought Hurston's crew weren't concerned enough with "racial uplift" and Hurston's group thought the New Negroes were too white-facing, too willing to accept outside definitions of what uplift means. So, like, Richard Wright savaged Their Eyes Were Watching God, comparing Hurston's dialect to "the minstrel technique that makes the 'white folks' laugh."

Claude McKay falls with the first crew, although Home to Harlem straddles the line a bit. It describes Harlem in terrific, specific detail, the good and the bad equally. His characters speak in a variety of dialects. There are even pimps! And they call them "sweet-backs"! Jake, "McKay's symbol of primitive Afro-American decency and vitality" according to my edition's intro, actually returns to Harlem twice over the course of the novel. "Good old Harlem! Chocolate Harlem! Sweet Harlem!" But also, "This here Harlem is a stinking sink of iniquity. N---r hell!"

The worst of Harlem's culture is described unflinchingly. One of Jake's girlfriends "was disappointed in Jake. She had wanted him to live in the usual sweet way, to be brutal and beat her up a little, and take away her money from her." And another character, Strawberry Lips (!), is described as

typically the stage Negro. He was proof that a generalization has some foundation in truth...You might live your life in many black belts and arrive at the conclusion that there is no such thing as a typical Negro - no minstrel coon off the stage... no lineal descendant of Uncle Tom. Then one day your theory may be upset through meeting with a type by far more perfect than any created counterpart.

I think it's telling that, in the end, Jake leaves Harlem for good. But McKay makes no secret of his affection for Harlem at its best, too; on balance, this is less an indictment than a love letter to "the contagious fever of Harlem. Burning everywhere in dark-eyed Harlem…" All this reflects Hurston's worldview.

But the New Negro is represented by Jake's best friend, educated Ray, a stand-in for McKay himself. Ray lectures about Abbysinia, "the only nation that has existed free and independent from the earliest records of history until today," and is given to quoting Goethe. At one point he says

We ought to get something new, we Negroes. But we get our education like - like our houses. When the white move out, we move in and take possession of the old dead stuff. Dead stuff that this age has no use for.

And it seems like McKay is talking about himself, because McKay writes sonnets, which are pretty much the oldest, deadest, whitest thing there is. (On the other hand, he fuckin' owns them.)

Home to Harlem isn't a great book. It's meandering and shapeless. But it's great for conveying the flavor of Harlem during the Jazz Age. It's a good second-tier Harlem Renaissance entry.

[Tanabrus · Rating 4 out of 5]

In questo libro, primo romanzo di McKay, seguiamo il protagonista Jake di ritorno dal fronte nella sua America.

Ma Jake è un ragazzo di colore, la prima guerra mondiale per lui era stata estremamente insoddisfacente -lui e i suoi compagni erano stati parcheggiati ben lontano dai combattimenti a fare praticamente da bassa manovalanza- e a un certo punto, durante un permesso, Jake aveva disertato.
La Francia, l'Inghilterra, e infine una volta terminati gli scontri, l'America di nuovo.

Jake è un abitante di Harlem, un serio lavoratore che sa quando rimboccarsi le maniche e quando, invece, può dare libero sfogo alla sua voglia di vita. Le carte, gli alcolici, i balli sfrenati nei locali fino al mattino, la passione per le ragazze enormemente ricambiata dal gentil sesso.
Seguendo Jake assistiamo alla vita ad Harlem, ai colori e alla musica che la permeano, ai vari tipi di persone che la popolano, alle sfumature sulle pelli dei suoi abitanti.

Una storia che è, alla fine, una storia d'amore: inizia con un incontro al rientro di Jake ad Harlem, tra Jake e una misteriosa ragazza che poi non riuscirà più a trovare... fino al finale, con il fortuito secondo incontro tra i due, e l'addio a una Harlem che si sta facendo sempre più violenta e pericolosa.

In mezzo abbiamo cantanti e donne benestanti che mantengono gli amanti, proprietarie di salottini e locali di cabaret, scioperi al porto e il lavoro nella cucina del treno, droghe e fiumi di alcolici.
E ovviamente abbiamo Ray, il cameriere haitiano che ha studiato all'università e che rifugge la sua condizione e la condizione dei suoi simili, il ragazzo acculturato che diventa amico con questo adone di colore dall'animo gentile e di buon cuore. E' Ray a incantarlo raccontandogli della rivolta degli schiavi ad Haiti e della loro lotta per la libertà, è Ray a parlargli di libri e idee, mentre Jake gli mostra come può essere presa con facilità la vita, con naturalezza.
Jake invidia la cultura di Ray, perché così potrebbe capire per bene i suoi discorsi, da pari a pari; e Ray gli invidia il suo animo, la sua spensieratezza, la facilità con la quale attraversa la vita mentre lui è tormentato dai pensieri e dall'insoddisfazione.

Un romanzo breve e veloce, un gran bello spaccato della Harlem del primo dopoguerra e della condizione delle persone di colore nell'America di allora.

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A wolf is all right ef he knows the jungle”

“Theah’s life anywheres theah’s booze and jazz, and theah’s cases of gin and a gramophone whar we’s going”

Published in 1928, in the heart of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay’s “Home to Harlem” was not without its critics in the black literary and political community. W.E.B DuBois said of it:

“Home to Harlem for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth, I feel distinctly like taking a bath...It looks like McKay has set out to cater to that prurient demand on the part of the white folk for a portrayal in negroes of utter licentiousness”

It was published at a moment of soul searching within competing factions of the black community in which some were ready to move away from the vernacular, and realism based novels of men like the Jamaican born McKay who would argue that he wrote what he saw, and those who believed that even if this was in fact the present reality, blacks should, if not explicitly, aspire to a literature that mirrored the “educated” voice of white writers or at the very least be more based in struggle.
I think it is perhaps unfair to label McKay in this way however. In many of his novels “Romance in Marseille” is a good parallel, McKay does in fact engage in criticism of the white power structure that packs black men and women in places like Harlem.
While it is undoubtedly filled with colorful characters such as pimps, gamblers, hustlers, and others, it also is I believe a celebration of life, no matter the obstacles one may face.
McKay for example gives us the character of Ray, a relatively educated man with a love of reading who always finds himself at odds with his surroundings and expectations for his life. He finds it difficult with what he knows to enjoy life and it is not until he meets Jake, a kind of free spirited womanizing, gin swilling wanderer, that he can at least temporarily live in the moment instead of his world of unmet expectations.

“Nobody knows, Jake. Anyway, you’re happier than I as you are. The more I learn the less I understand and love life. All the learning in this world can’t answer this little question, Why are we living?”

This is not to say that McKay is advocating living hand to mouth, bowing to white folks, and not educating themseves. Take this passage when two characters are discussing a labor strike:

“Nope, I won’t scab, but I ain’t a joiner kind of fellah. I ain’t no white folks nigger”

What he is saying I believe however, is that struggle is baked into life. It could be racial struggle, it could be family struggle, or any other myriad kind and that sometimes you need to just go out and dance, find a good man or woman when you’re lonely, or spend some time with your friends.
While this kind of libertine attitude was found to be offensive by many who saw projecting a new image of being black to white audiences as their primary objective, McKay wasn’t writing for them.
He wrote for the average black man and woman who spoke this way, who danced, who drank, who occasionally met violence with violence, and whose only objective was to live their lives with a little joy.
Or as McKay himself write in response to criticism:

“I make my Negro characters yarn and backbite and fuck like people the world over”

[Cheng Yu-Tung · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It really transported me back to Harlem in the 1920s. Through the lives of young unskilled African-Americans living and working in Harlem.

The clothes, the food, entertainment and while sporadic; the political views.

All in all a great quick read, no surprise that this book was a best seller in its time.

[Rosa Sophia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've seen a lot of controversial reviews of this book, but I very much enjoyed it. I love fiction from this period, and I really like Claude McKay's writing style. Worth a read.

[Seward Park Branch Library, NYPL · Rating 3 out of 5]

W.E.B Dubois said of 'Home To Harlem', and I quote, “Home to Harlem for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath. . . . It looks as though McKay has set out to cater to that prurient demand on the part of the white folk for a portrayal in Negroes..."

Upon reading the first few pages of this book, I thought I was going to despise it... it seemed too much like a Disney movie. And worse still, Dubois' charge seemed to ring true. Yet, I'm very glad I persisted in turning the leaves, for it ended up being an unexpected delight.

Though much of Harlem's epic seems to be a mass of iniquity, this is far too narrow a reading of this work which on many occasions serves as such a fine example of tenderness and divine reflection on blackness in 1920's America, from black, to brown, to lemon yellow, and passing white.

And can't we take the rather haphazard existence of the characters in HTH of living in a world of absurdity and little justice? Surely, the reader is meant to take their first queue from Jake's insistence that he wasn't going to fight a white man's war (WWI) any longer, and he deserts. After staying in London for a bit, Jake then sails home to Harlem, and so our journey with Jake and friends begins...

Jake meets a lot of rude characters, a lot of women, and a lot of alcoholic beverages. Yet, his pal Ray, a Haitian (like McKay himself) who he meets working as a cook in a train car was by far the most resonant character for me. He has an admiration for Jake's day-to-day existence, his ability to throw caution to the wind and not think about tomorrow. Contrariwise, Ray's head is made heavy by his extensive reading in Western Literature, and his desire to be a writer. Yet, what is there for the black man to write on? For, he lives not like Zola, nor Hugo, in whose works Ray

"... had lived on [their] brilliant manna that fell like a flame-fall from those burning stars."

though after WWI, writers could not write simple stories with simple words in a world shattered by war. It was the end of an era. Ray reflects,

"What were men making of words now? [...] He had read, fascinated all that D.H. Lawrence published. And he wondered if there was not a great Lawrence reservoir of worlds too terrible and too terrifying for nice printing. [...] And literature, story telling, had little interest for him now if thought and feeling did not wrestle and sprawl with appetite and dark desire all over the pages.

and so Ray asks himself,

"Could he create out of the fertile reality around him? Of Jake nosing through life, a handsome hound, quick to snap up any tempting morsel of poisoned meat thrown carelessly on the pavement? Of a work pal he had visited in the venereal ward of Bellevue, where youths lolled sadly about? And the misery that overwhelmed him there, until life like one big disease and the world a vast hospital?"

It doesn't stretch the imagination too thin to imagine McKay must have asked himself this many times while writing 'Home To Harlem'. I think this is why McKay is so deliberate with working with black colloquialisms (rather than 'catering' to white sensibilities, as DuBois puts it). Ray, who surely channels McKay himself, says to Jake on the topic of education,

"A Negro getting [an education] is an anachronism. We ought to get something new, we Negroes. But we get our education like—like our houses. When the whites move out, we move in and take possession of old dead stuff. Dead stuff that this age has no use for."

...and finishes his thought with a Nietzschean epiphany,

"[fine feelings] are false and dry as civilization itself. And civilization is rotten, We are all rotten who are touched by it."

a few pages later, McKay as narrator says,

"No wonder [whites] hated them, when out of their melancholy environment the blacks could create mad, contagious music and high laughter..."

This must be McKay's project. And I'm sure we may consider it done. And, in a sweet sweet moment in the books later, Jake and his love, Felice, go to the pictures and watch blacks on screen, and the crowd laughs as blacks play white society people, and play themselves as whites see them.

My one (major) foible with 'Home to Harlem' is that it's a bit of a boy's club, a 'men's warehouse' if you would—unfortunately it's a big peeve of mine, and not the kind of story I'm very likely to dig. Woman chasing and drunken bro-revelry only goes so far, and there's a little too much of it here for me to become carried away with the novel's truly brilliant moments. Nevertheless, this seems to have more to do with the characters featured in what seems to be Harlem's very own epic, rather than a systemic sexist current which pervades the author's psyche... a recommended read indeed, at a good ol' 3.5 stars.

--AF

[Edith · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Yet here he was caught up in the thing that he despised so thoroughly... Brest, London, and his America. Their vivid brutality tortured his imagination. Oh, he was infinitely disgusted with himself to think that he had just been moved by the same savage emotions as those vile, vicious, villainous white men who, like hyenas and rattlers, had fought, murdered, and clawed the entrails out of black men over the common, commercial flesh of women..." (328).

Excerpts like the above represent McKay's ability to capture the sentiments of African-Americans living in the United States and other groups that face discrimination. McKay captures the cynicism, hope, and despair of the people of color during the Harlem Renaissance. Even if you're not into being politically conscious or politics, this isn't necessarily about that. It's more about emotions and life through the stories of the dynamic characters in the plot: Jake, Zeddy, Ray, Billy. You sympathize with even the minor characters. Really recommend; there is a slow beginning so be patient.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great peak into 1920’s Harlem. Kinda the black-man’s version of an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. I loved the exploration of the Harlem clubs and cabarets, as well as the depiction of working on a passenger train during this time period. While there are a lot of song lyrics in the novel, I really didn’t recognize any, yet had a great soundtrack going on in my head while reading this. The style this novel was written in really reminded me of Nora Neale Hurston’s, “Their Eyes Where Watching God,” as the narrator speaks perfect English and the characters all of their own dialect. This was easier to read than “Their Eyes . . . “ yet the vocabulary was a challenge due to all of the lost “jazz” words. Really enjoyed this one!

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't we love that they've discovered McKay's lost novel and will be publishing it soon? Need to read this before the new one comes out. Also, love to read BlaQ authors...
+++
Sensuous, ribald, funny, humane. It's easy to see how McKay's portrayal of working-class blacks and their relationships ruffled the feathers of the black literary/political old guard at the time. This book would likely meet the same reaction if released today, without the benefit of being considered a classic. It's interesting for historical reasons and it also holds up very well-- it's just entertaining. McKay knew how to craft a sentence; this book contains some of my favorites.

[Marginalia Σημειώσεις στο περιθώριο]

Κριτική του βιβλίου από τον Μάνο Κουμή στα Marginalia: https://marginalia.gr/arthro/mayri-oy...

[Charlie Rosenthal · Rating 4 out of 5]

McKay's Home to Harlem is, without a doubt, an under-appreciated classic of the Harlem Renaissance. While it lacks the fame of something like Their Eyes Were Watching God, Home to Harlem is a vital chronicle of the lives of low status blacks in the cultural Mecca of 1920s Harlem. McKay's protagonist, Jake, is, in some ways, the ideal representation of the common man of Harlem. Instead of living a life of privilege, Jake sponges off women, holds odd jobs, and generally shows himself to be a non-contributor to society. In stark contrast to many protagonists of Harlem Renaissance literature, Jake is neither rural nor well to do. This rarity makes Home to Harlem a fascinating novel. The most lasting contribution of McKay's novel is the way in which it portrays Harlem. There is a meaningful and visible difference between white life and black life, a divide that, when explored in literature, is nearly always interesting. Not only do McKay's characters speak, presumably, as blacks did during this time, but they also act in a way that, for better or worse, shows the perceived exoticism of Harlem. While Du Bois'--in my view, wrongly--criticized Home to Harlem for presenting a negative image of American blacks, that is one of the novel's strongest points: McKay creates characters who act as their real life analogues would. They don't always represent their race well, they do drugs, they drink, they fight, they fornicate. This novel, not intended as some sort of anthropological exercise to convince whites of the similarity of blacks, paints Harlem as the thrilling, lively, vibrant place that it was. As a result, whether you find McKay stylistically strong or not--he is--, Home to Harlem works brilliantly as, basically, an educational novel, enlightening readers and showing them the amazing place that Harlem is and was.

[Joshua · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was somewhat entertaining, but that's because I'll read anything, not because I actually enjoyed it. It wasn't my kind of book, I must admit. The conclusion had not real closure, which bothered me. Although I loved the way people were depicted in a no-holds-barred fashion, and the degree to which the disturbing realism of the mental images he created had. But still, overall, the book left more to be desired, as most of the novel was very dry. I felt that I had to force myself to continue. Not out of disgust, but out of sheer boredom.

[janelle ‧₊˚✩彡 · Rating 4 out of 5]

i finished this two weeks ago, forgot to update whoops

[Andrea]

Impossible to rate this book. I found it slow-going and almost absent a real plot -- what plot there was seemed entirely incidental to the capturing of a slice of glorious Black life (in opposition to whiteness and respectability and death). I loved it for its stories and evocations of sights and smells and sounds, all the cadences of how people spoke and Harlem's most riotous living. Glimpses of Afro-American/Afro-Carribean (how intertwined these are on the East Coast which you forget on the West!) life on the trains and in speakeasies and kitchens and high society. A celebration of blackness in all of its shades -- and believe me, they are all listed here from high yellows to cocoa-browns to chocolate-browns to dim-browns to clear-browns to chestnuts and coppers to gleaming anthracites. It has a taste of the autobiographical in the character Ray, Haitian waiter on the trains forced to leave college due to American Imperialism causing a fall in his family's fortunes but who has never given up on his education. A taste of the longed-for in the character of Jake, admired and liked by all and taking life as it comes...

I like plots, I won't lie. I wnated this to be a novel or a collection of short stories and being in between it doesn't quite work I don't think. But I did love whole sections of it.

Oh 'blues,' 'blues,' 'blues.' Black-framed white grinning. Finger-snapping. Undertone singing. The three men with women teasing the stags. Zeddy's gorilla feet dancing down the dark death lurking in his heart. Zeddy dancing with a pal. 'Blues,' 'blues,' 'blues.' Red moods, black moods, golden moods. Curious, syncopated slipping-over into one mood, back-sliding back to the first mood. Humming in harmony, barbaric harmony, joy-drunk, chasing out the shadow of the moment before (29-30)

The lovely trees of Seventh Avenue were a vivid flame-green. Children, lightly clad, skipped on the pavement. Light open coats prevailed and the smooth bare throats of brown girls were a token as charming as the first pussy-willows. Far and high above it all, the sky was a grand blue benediction, and beneath it the wonderful air of New York tasted like fine dry champagne. (146)

And the last quote just because it's just what I'm working on

They had walked down Madison Avenue, turned on One Hundred and Thirtieth Street, passing the solid grey-grim mass of the whites' Presbyterian church, and were under the timidly whispering trees of the decorously silent and distinguished Block Beautiful .... The whites had not evacuated that block yet. The black invasion was threatening it from One Hundred and Thirty-first Street, from Fifth Avennue, even from behind in One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Street. But desperate, frightened, blanch-faced, the ancient sepulchral Respectability held on. And giving them moral courage, the Presbyterian church frowned on the corner like a fortress against the invasion. The Block Beautiful was worth a struggle. With its charming green lawns and quaint white-fronted houses, it preserved the most Arcadian atmosphere in all New York. ... The Ancient Respectability was getting ready to flee.' (158)

[Ebony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Home to Harlem is hard to critique. The book has to be read in its temporal context, and, without contradiction, its critics then would be rolling over in their graves now. For example, I am obsessed with season two of Pussy Valley in 2022. The writing is smart, and it’s a snapshot of southern culture—the strip club, the drugs, the sex, the fashion, the music, the slang, the violence, the poverty, the gentrification, the joys, and the pains of sheer survival. Home to Harlem is the same only in a different geography nearly 100 years ago. Just like some black critics weren’t ready for something so raw in 1928; some black critics now aren’t either, but I am happy to report so many folks are appreciating the work P-Valley is doing. I wonder how the TV show will be received 100 years from today...

Just typing 100 years ago helps me understand Home to Harlem context even more. McKay was on a mission to accurately reflect black life and there’s a lot of detail to help him do that. There’s so much color. I’ve never read anything so attuned to the colors of black people—bright, chocolate, purple, honey brown, regular brown—everyone is described by their skin color, but not their hair texture which I find interesting. McKay is also good with the colors of the environment. Everything has a color. Every action is meticulously explained from how people walk, what streets they were walking, what they were wearing when they walked, and how their bodies moved when they danced.

I kept waiting for something to happen. Something dreadful like a violent death or a deep betrayal and nope, nothing really happens. Even when something did happen, it was usually one of the characters telling or remembering a story that happened to someone else. I came to accept that Harlemites just living their lives was the plot and the point. But no one does it alone. There are several endearing friendships between the main character and his pals. They might just be hanging out, but you sense how deeply they care about one another even if no one ever says it. People lived their lives the best way they knew how even if that was living in a room, spending the day’s pay as soon as they got it, drinking and gambling all night, taking a few drugs, and finding someone to love as long as it lasts even if they had to exchange money to get it. I did not expect the through line of the book would be a man looking for a woman, but in truth, isn’t that what we’re all looking for—our someone to make the doldrums of everyday life a little less dull?

I can’t say I recommend Home to Harlem for the casual reader. If I were in a black history or black literature class and we were reading other novels in context, sure, but to pick it up for fun and read all 340 pages, you gotta set your expectations. I read it because I wanted to immerse myself in the different Harlem epochs which it did, but in truth, I could have done it in a short story and not the novel. But McKay reminds me to appreciate all aspects of black life all the time. There’s no one way to be black and all the ways deserve representation and appreciation.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He thrilled to Harlem."

"'Where else could a fellow git such good a cheap man clothes to cover his skin?'"

"'All the streets am just the same and all the houses 'like as peas. I could try this one heah or that one there but -- Rabbit foot! I didn't even git her name.'"

"Jake and Zeddy picked two girls from a green bench and waded into the hot soup."

"Tight faced, the men seemed interested only in drinking and gaming, while Suzy and Miss Curdy, guzzling hard, grew uglier."

"His life was a free coarse thing, but he detested nastiness and ugliness."

"Suzy could cook. Perhaps it was her splendid style that made her sink all her wages in gin and sweetmen."

"'Life ain't no country picnic with sweet flute and fiddle,' Miss Curdy sighed."

"'It's the same life even ef they drink champagne and we drink gin.'"

"'If you no like it you can lump it!'"

"Oh and that made the gossip toothier!"

"The young man lay under the untellable horror of a dead-tired man who wills to sleep and cannot."

"'Young and pretty is all I feel.'"

"'Strutting the joy-stuff!'"

"I saw Jerco kneeling down by the open wardrobe and kissing the toe of one of her brown shoes."

"'The whole wul' is bloody-crazy--"

"'But I want something as mahvelous as mah feelings."

"'Oh, goody, goody, honey-stick!'"

[Kate Savage · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is historically important, but a rough read. McKay captures the movement and color and celebration and pain of Harlem night-life in the 20s; he engages with the cultural power of the place, which both attracts and terrifies white people; he even delves into some powerful racial analysis of education, international conflict, and 'progress,' through the character of Ray.

The novel doesn't have a narrative arc - just a series of episodes struggling to hold meaning. Which would be just fine, if the main character (Jake) wasn't also such a dick, particularly to the women who are constantly throwing themselves at him. At the same time, he's held up as decent because he doesn't hit and abuse the women (except for that one time) -- women who, in a kind of Ayn Rand move, explicitly state their desire for him to beat them up as a show of his passion for them. Not only does the book not pass the Bechdel test, most of the female characters don't pass the Sexy Lamp Test (can you replace a female character with a sexy lamp without harming the shape of the book?).

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Claude McKay I'm proud to say is a Jamaican writer of the Harlem Renaissance. Home to Harlem follows Jake from the US to London then back to Harlem.

[Sheneika · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an easy read. It was reviewed harshly in its time. I would compare it to the way many African American critics view Tyler Perry's work as stereotypical and reductive to the progress of African American entertainment. If you would like to feel a part of Harlem in the early 1900s, you will enjoy this book.

I would suggest researching the author as well as reading the book. Claude McKay led a very interesting life.

[Melissa Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It was the simple, lovely touch of life that charmed and stirred him most...a late wet night on Lenox Avenue, when all forms are soft-shadowy and the street gleams softly like a still, dim stream under the misted yellow lights. He remembered the melancholy-comic notes of blues rising out of a Harlem basement before dawn. He was going to catch an early train and all that trip he was sweetly, deliciously happy humming the refrain..." pg 266

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Colorful slice of life in Harlem between the wars, but the exploitative descriptions of women angered and upset me. I know he was a key writer of the Harlem Renaissance, so I would like to read other work by Claude McKay. Product of his times? His contemporary Langston Hughes didn't write so negatively about women. Interesting twist at the end where we find out more about the main character Jake's experience as a soldier in a segregated unit in France during WWI.

[Marissa MC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Language is the puddle of this book. The colloquial jargon used in his dialogue juxtaposes McKays’ exact, crisp, and pensive prose. The shocking language and gender relationships—the way he paints Harlem in this era, making it tangible with every word he places on the page kept me reading. Shocking phrases that make you cringe but understand the subverted minds of a people living in a white America. Read it.

[eliza · Rating 2 out of 5]

i really enjoy mckay as a poet, but as a novelist, blech. this book was totally aimless, with no plot to speak of and some truly weak characters, especially the females. unlike some i didn't mind the grittiness, but compared to its contemporaries it just didn't add up to anything cohesive or insightful.

[Tana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Claude McKay redefines blackness for the new negro movement of the early 20th century. This book has many layers and plays with the complexities of relationships, womanhood, and brotherhood. I'll read it again and again.

[Crystal Eckles · Rating 5 out of 5]

lOVE IT!!

[Eric Zimmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The dual narrative of Jake and Ray is great, but discussion of the race question gets in the way at times. This book is oozing with sex, and the characters are well formed and likeable.