A Long Way from Home

by Claude McKay

Overview

From one of the most significant figures of the Harlem Renaissance comes a narrative defining book chronicling his life from Jamaica to New York City

Claude McKay’s long odyssey from Jamaica to Harlem, Europe, North Africa, Russia, and back to America is chronicled in this autobiography of the most militant writers to emerge from the New Negro movement following World War I. Whether in the intellectual circles of Harlem and Greenwich Village, the docks of Marseilles, or the inner circles of post-revolutionary Russia, McKay’s contact with such figures as Frank Harris, Max Eastman, George Bernard Shaw, W.E.B Dubois, James Weldon Johnson, Charles Chaplin, H.G Wells, Sinclair Lewis, Trotsky, and Radek all served to advance those views which would be so widely accepted in the 1960—Black Pride, self-determination, and the necessity for Black culture to define itself. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063357723
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/22/2023
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Claude McKay (1889-1948), born Festus Claudius McKay, is widely regarded as one of the most important literary and political writers of the interwar period and the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Jamaica, he moved to the U.S. in 1912 to study at the Tuskegee Institute. In 1928, he published his most famous novel, Home to Harlem, which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature. He also published two other novels, Banjo and Banana Bottom, as well as a collection of short stories, Gingertown, two autobiographical books, A Long Way from Home and My Green Hills of Jamaica, and a work of nonfiction, Harlem: Negro Metropolis. His Selected Poems was published posthumously, and in 1977 he was named the national poet of Jamaica.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
Part 1	American Beginning
Chapter I	A Great Editor	3
Chapter II	Other Editors	26
Chapter III	White Friends	35
Chapter IV	Another White Friend	45
Part 2	English Inning
Chapter V	Adventuring in Search of George Bernard Shaw	59
Chapter VI	Pugilist Vs. Poet	66
Chapter VII	A Job in London	73
Chapter VIII	Regarding Reactionary Criticism	86
Part 3	New York Horizon
Chapter IX	Back in Harlem	95
Chapter X	A Brown Dove Cooing	116
Chapter XI	A Look at H. G. Wells	121
Chapter XII	"He Who Gets Slapped"	130
Chapter XIII	"Harlem Shadows"	147
Part 4	The Magic Pilgrimage
Chapter XIV	The Dominant Urge	153
Chapter XV	An Individual Triumph	167
Chapter XVI	The Pride and Pomp of Proletarian Power	172
Chapter XVII	Literary Interest	185
Chapter XVIII	Social Interest	191
Chapter XIX	A Great Celebration	206
Chapter XX	Regarding Radical Criticism	226
Part 5	The Cynical Continent
Chapter XXI	Berlin and Paris	237
Chapter XXII	Friends in France	253
Chapter XXIII	Frank Harris in France	265
Chapter XXIV	Cinema Studio	272
Chapter XXV	Marseilles Motley	277
Part 6	The Idylls of Africa
Chapter XXVI	When a Negro Goes Native	295
Chapter XXVII	The New Negro in Paris	306
Chapter XXVIII	Hail and Farewell to Morocco	324
Chapter XXIX	On Belonging to a Minority Group	342