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One of the foremost Black writers and intellectuals of his era, Claude McKay (1889¿1948) was a central figure in Caribbean literature, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Black radical tradition. Winston James offers a revelatory account of McKay¿s political and intellectual trajectory from his upbringing in Jamaica through 1921.
List of contents
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part I: Jamaican Beginnings: The Formation of a Black Fabian, 1889–1912
1. A Son of the Soil: Jamaica’s Claude McKay
2. Holding the Negro in Subjection: Claude McKay’s Jamaica
3. You Caan’ Mek We Shet Up: McKay’s Jamaican Poetry of Rebellion
4. The Man Who Left Jamaica: Claude McKay in 1912
Part II: Coming to America: From Fabianism to Bolshevism, 1912–1919
5. “Six Silent Years”: McKay and America, 1912–1918
6. Fighting Back: Claude McKay and the Crisis of 1919
Part III: England, Their England: McKay’s British Sojourn, 1919–1921
7. English Innings and Left-Wing Communism: McKay’s Bolshevization in Britain
8. Making Spring in New Hampshire, the 1917 Club, Standing Up, and Thinking of England
A Coda
Notes
Index
About the author
Winston James is the author of A Fierce Hatred of Injustice: Claude McKay’s Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion (2000); The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799–1851 (2010); and Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (second edition, 2020), winner of the Gordon K. Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship of the Caribbean Studies Association. He is also coeditor of and contributor to Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain (1993). James has held teaching positions in the United Kingdom and the United States, most recently as professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.
Summary
One of the foremost Black writers and intellectuals of his era, Claude McKay (1889–1948) was a central figure in Caribbean literature, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Black radical tradition. Winston James offers a revelatory account of McKay’s political and intellectual trajectory from his upbringing in Jamaica through 1921.
Additional text
James is well-known for his ability to historicize McKay while retaining a keen sensitivity to, and reading of, McKay’s literary contributions. In this book, he emphasizes an often-inadequately addressed aspect of the writer’s work: a deep understanding of McKay’s early political formation and radicalization, and how such origins structured McKay’s thinking and art.
