Meet the young novelist from Jamaica who upset W.E.B. DuBois.
When Claude McKay-Festus Claudius McKay-left Jamaica to study at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama in 1912 he was already known as a poet. A few years later, he moved to New York City, just in time to become a major writer in the Harlem Renaissance.
McKay responded to the brutality of American racism in the early 20th century by writing and contributing to socialist-oriented journals. His most well-known poem from that time is "If We Must Die." The sonnet begins
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot. ...
You might be familiar with this as the poem recited during World War II by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The style of "If We Must Die" and other poems is in sharp contrast to that of McKay's three novels: Home to Harlem (1928), Banjo (1929) and Banana Bottom (1933). As Langston Hughes and others suggested and did, Claude McKay too wrote about everyday working people. His characters drink alcohol, have sex outside of marriage, fight, use dialect and generally have lifestyles that truly irked older, more conservative African-Americans like W.E.B. DuBois.
DuBois, author of "The Souls of Black Folk and close to 40 other works, reacted to his reading of Home to Harlem by saying, "for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath." Despite this response, Home To Harlem was generally a success. He firmly took his place as a Harlem Renaissance author. McKay's following novels did not fare quite as well.
Although he's been called "Jamaica's Poet Laureate," besides New York City Claude McKay also lived, among other places, in Kansas, England, Morocco, France, and he died in 1948 in Chicago. Read his autobiographies-A Long Way from Home and My Green Hills of Jamaica-to learn more about McKay.
