Home to Harlem

by Claude McKay

Overview

First published in 1928, "Home to Harlem" is Claude McKay's classic portrayal of African American society in New York City after World War One, during the height of the Harlem Renaissance. The story revolves around Jake Brown, an army deserter who has been living in London. When Jake hears news of a race riot in America he returns home to Harlem. On his first night back Jake falls in love with a sex worker and spends much of the rest of the novel in search of her. In a series of largely unconnected episodes, Claude McKay gives the reader a vivid picture of Jake and more broadly of African American life in Harlem just before prohibition. An instant commercial success when it was first published; "Home to Harlem" has been both praised and criticized for its gritty raw portrayal of African American life in New York City at the end of the 1910s. The novel remains to this day as one of McKay's most important works. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781420981995
Publisher:	Digireads.com
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Pages:	124
Sales rank:	310,328
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.29(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