Bücher von Claude McKay

VINTAGE CLASSICS' HARLEM RENAISSANCE SERIES Celebrating the finest works of the Harlem Renaissance, one of the most important Black arts movements in modern history.'Why did I want to mix mahself up in a white folk's war? It ain't ever was any of black folks' affair'When Jake Brown joins the army during the First World War, he is treated more like a slave than a soldier. After deserting his post to escape the racial violence he is facing, Jake travels back home to Harlem. But despite the distance, Jake cannot seem to escape the past and the explosive ways in which it can culminate. Written with brutal accuracy, Home to Harlem is an extraordinary work, and was the first American bestseller by a Black writer. 'One of the most gifted writers of the Harlem Renaissance' Washington Post

First published in 1937 in the US by Lee Furman, Inc. This edition based on original cover and text.A Jamaican-born writer describes his experiences traveling throughout the world following World War I, and recalls his friendships with celebrities of the Twenties and Thirties.

LARGE PRINT EDITION. Songs of Jamaica (1912) is a poetry collection by Claude McKay. Published before the poet left Jamaica for the United States, Songs of Jamaica is a pioneering collection of verse written in Jamaican Patois, the first of its kind. As a committed leftist, McKay was a keen observer of the Black experience in the Caribbean, the American South, and later in New York, where he gained a reputation during the Harlem Renaissance for celebrating the resilience and cultural achievement of the African American community while lamenting the poverty and violence they faced every day. "Quashie to Buccra," the opening poem, frames this schism in terms of labor, as one class labors to fulfill the desires of another: "You tas'e petater an' you say it sweet, / But you no know how hard we wuk fe it; / You want a basketful fe quattiewut, / 'Cause you no know how 'tiff de bush fe cut." Addressing himself to a white audience, he exposes the schism inherent to colonial society between white and black, rich and poor. Advising his white reader to question their privileged consumption, dependent as it is on the subjugation of Jamaica's black community, McKay warns that "hardship always melt away / Wheneber it comes roun' to reapin' day." This revolutionary sentiment carries throughout Songs of Jamaica, finding an echo in the brilliant poem "Whe' fe do?" Addressed to his own people, McKay offers hope for a brighter future to come: "We needn' fold we han' an' cry, / Nor vex we heart wid groan and sigh; / De best we can do is fe try / To fight de despair drawin' night: / Den we might conquer by an' by- / Dat we might do." With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Claude McKay's Songs of Jamaica is a classic of Jamaican literature reimagined for modern readers.

2018 Reprint of 1922 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. "Here is a young man, born in the British West Indies, who is without doubt the most talented and versatile of the new school of imaginative, emotional negro poets. Feeling intensely, at times bitterly, he succeeds, nevertheless, in preventing his emotions from affecting his genius as a poet. He has surety of expression, depth of feeling, the true lyric gift, and handles amazingly well subtle gradations of thought and of feeling. Mr. McKay is not a great negro poet-he is a great poet! This is his first book of verse to be published in the United States, but it will give him the high place among American poets to which he is rightfully entitled." Review of Harlem Shadows by Walter F. White, in The Negro's Contribution, 1922.

Harlem Shadows (1922) is a poetry collection by Claude McKay. Published at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem Shadows earned praise from legendary poet and political activist Max Eastman for its depictions of urban life and the technical mastery of its author. As a committed leftist, McKay¿who grew up in Jamaicäcaptures the life of Harlem from a realist¿s point of view, lamenting the poverty of its African American community while celebrating their resilience and cultural achievement. In ¿The White City,¿ McKay observes New York, its ¿poles and spires and towers vapor-kissed¿ and ¿fortressed port through which the great ships pass.¿ Filled him with a hatred of the inhuman scene of industry and power, forced to ¿muse [his] life-long hate,¿ he observes the transformative quality of focused anger: ¿My being would be a skeleton, a shell, / If this dark Passion that fills my every mood, / And makes my heaven in the white world¿s hell, / Did not forever feed me vital blood.¿ Rather than fall into despair, he channels his hatred into a revolutionary spirit, allowing him to stand tall within ¿the mighty city.¿ In ¿The Tropics in New York,¿ he walks past a window filled with ¿Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root, / Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,¿ a feast of fresh tropical fruit that brings him back, however briefly, to his island home of Jamaica. Recording his nostalgic response, McKay captures his personal experience as an immigrant in America: ¿My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze; / A wave of longing through my body swept, / And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, / I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.¿ With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Claude McKay¿s Harlem Shadows is a classic of Jamaican literature reimagined for modern readers.

Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems (1920) is a poetry collection by Claude McKay. Published toward the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems is the first of McKay¿s collections to appear in the United States. As a committed leftist, McKay¿who grew up in Jamaicäcaptures the life of African Americans from a realist¿s point of view, lamenting their exposure to poverty, racism, and violence while celebrating their resilience and cultural achievement. Several years before T. S. Eliot¿s The Waste Land (1922) and William Carlos Williams¿ Spring and All (1923), modernist poet Claude McKay troubles the traditional symbol of springtime to accommodate the hardships of an increasingly industrialized world. In ¿Spring in New Hampshire,¿ the poet gives voice to a desperate laborer, for whom the beauty and harmony of the season of rebirth are not only sickening, but altogether inaccessible: ¿Too green the springing April grass, / Too blue the silver-speckled sky, / For me to linger here, alas, / While happy winds go laughing by, / Wasting the golden hours indoors, / Washing windows and scrubbing floors.¿ A master of traditional forms, McKay brings his experience as a black man to bear on a poem otherwise dedicated to descriptions of natural beauty, challenging the very tradition his language and style invoke. In ¿The Lynching,¿ he calls on the reader to witness the brutality of American racism while exposing the complicity of those who would look without feeling: ¿[S]oon the mixed crowds came to view / The ghastly body swaying in the sun: / The women thronged to look, but never a one / Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue¿¿ As children dance around the victim¿s body, ¿lynchers that were to be,¿ McKay raises a terrible, timeless question: how long will such violence endure? With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Claude McKay¿s Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems is a classic of Jamaican literature reimagined for modern readers.

A harbinger of the Harlem Renaissance first published in 1922, this collection of poignant, lyrical poems explores Claude McKay's yearning for his Jamaican homeland and the bitter plight of Black and African Caribbean people in America-now with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown. With pure heart, passion, and honesty, Claude McKay offers an acute reflection on the complex nature of racial identity in the Caribbean diaspora, encompassing issues such as nationalism, freedom of expression, class, gender, and sex. The collection's eponymous poem, "Harlem Shadows," portrays the struggle of sex workers in 1920s Harlem. In "If We Must Die," McKay calls for justice and retribution for Black people in the face of racist abuse. Juxtaposing the cacophony of New York City with the serene beauty of Jamaica, McKay urges us to reckon with the oppression that plagues a "long-suffering race," who he argues has no home in a white man's world. Poems of Blackness, queerness, desire, performance, and love are infused with a radical message of resistance in this sonorous cry for universal human rights. Simultaneously a love letter to the spirit of New York City and an indictment of its harsh cruelty, Harlem Shadows is a stunning collection that remains all too relevant one hundred years after its original publication.