Letters in Exile: Transnational Journeys of a Harlem Renaissance Writer

A collection of private correspondence from one of the Harlem Renaissance’s brightest and most radical voices

The Jamaican-born, queer author Claude McKay (1890–1948) was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. His 1919 poem “If We Must Die” expressed a revolutionary vision for militant Black protest art, while his novels, including Home to Harlem, Banjo, and Banana Bottom, described ordinary Black life in lyrical prose. Yet for all that McKay connected himself to Harlem, he was a rest...