Bibliograph

Claude McKay, the making of a Black Bolshevik, Winston James

Type

Label

Claude McKay, the making of a Black Bolshevik, Winston James

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

resource.biographical

individual biography

Illustrations

illustrationsmapsplates

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Claude McKay

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

1289310463

Responsibility statement

Winston James

Sub title

the making of a Black Bolshevik

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. McKay's life and writing were defined by his class consciousness and anticolonialism, shaped by his experiences growing up in colonial Jamaica as well as his early career as a writer in Harlem and then London. Dedicated to confronting both racism and capitalist exploitation, he was a critical observer of the Black condition throughout the African diaspora and became a committed Bolshevik. Winston James offers a revelatory account of McKay's political and intellectual trajectory from his upbringing in Jamaica through the early years of his literary career and radical activism. In 1912, McKay left Jamaica to study in the United States, never to return. James follows McKay's time at the Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State University, as he discovered the harshness of American racism, and his move to Harlem, where he encountered the ferment of Black cultural and political movements and figures such as Hubert Harrison and Marcus Garvey. McKay left New York for London, where his commitment to revolutionary socialism deepened, culminating in his transformation from Fabian socialist to Bolshevik. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, James offers a rich and detailed chronicle of McKay's life, political evolution, and the historical, political, and intellectual contexts that shaped him"--, Provided by publisher

Table Of Contents

A son of the soil : Jamaica's Claude McKay -- Holding the negro in subjection : Claude McKay's Jamaica -- You caan' mek we shet up : Mckay's Jamaican Poetry of Rebellion -- The man who left Jamaica : Claude McKay in 1912 -- "Six silent years" : McKay and America, 1912-1918 -- Fighting back : Claude McKay and the crisis of 1919 -- English innings and left-wing communism : McKay's Bolshevization in Britain -- Making Spring in New Hampshire, the 1917 Club, standing up, and thinking of England

Classification