Home to Harlem

by Claude McKay

Overview

Published in 1928, Claude McKay's novel Home to Harlem follows the story of the main character Jake Brown, a former soldier, as he attempts to rebuild his life in Harlem after his experience in World War I. Festus Claudius ""Claude"" McKay (September 15, 1890 - May 22, 1948) was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9791223073773
Publisher:	Passerino
Publication date:	02/10/2024
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.45(h) x 0.44(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 United States 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. In 2009, his lost manuscript for the 1930s novel Amiable with Big Teeth was discovered among the archived papers of Samuel Roth at Columbia University, and was published for the first time in 2017 by Penguin Classics. Romance in Marseille was published in 2020 by Penguin Classics. Belinda Edmondson is Distinguished Professor in the departments of English and Africana studies at Rutgers University-Newark. She is the winner of MLA’s first annual Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for African Studies in 2023. She is the author of several books on Caribbean literature and has won numerous grants and fellowships for her research.

Table of Contents

First Part
I Going Back Home
II Arrival 
III Zeddy 
IV Congo Rose 
V On the Job Again 
VI Myrtle Avenue 
VII Zeddy’s Rise and Fall 
VIII The Raid of the Baltimore 
IX Jake Makes a Move 

Second Part
X The Railroad 
XI Snowstorm in Pittsburgh 
XII The Treeing of the Chef 
XIII One Night in Philly 
XIV Interlude 
XV Relapse 
XVI A Practical Prank 
XVII He Also Loved 
XVIII A Farewell Feed 

Third Part
XIX Spring in Harlem 
XX Felice 
XXI The Gift That Billy Gave 

Editorial Reviews

Mr. McKay's book assails the optical, the olfactory, the kinaesthetic antennae whereby the human being takes in the world about him. In less stilted phrases, you can see, smell and feel what he writes. . . . Much of the charm of Home to Harlem is in the easy, unforced conversation of the many characters. -- Books of the Century; New York Times review, March 1928

John Chamberlain