A Long Way from Home

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.

Biographies & MemoirsArts & LiteratureAuthorsCommunity & CultureBlack & African AmericanMemoirs

RELEASED2023

PUBLISHERHarperCollins Publishers

LENGTH384

LANGUAGEEN

Claude McKayJamaican American writer, poet (1889–1948)

Festus Claudius McKay (September 15, 1890 – May 22, 1948) was a Jamaican-American writer and poet, and a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Jamaica, McKay first traveled to the United States to attend college, and encountered W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk which stimulated McKay’s interest in political involvement. He moved to New York City in 1914 and in 1919 wrote "If We Must Die", one of his best known works, a widely reprinted sonnet responding to the wave of white-on-black race riots and lynchings following the conclusion of the First World War.

A Long Way from Home

by Claude McKay

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.

Biographies & MemoirsArts & LiteratureAuthorsCommunity & CultureBlack & African AmericanMemoirsLiterature & FictionHistory & Criticism

RELEASED2023

PUBLISHERHarperCollins Publishers

LENGTH384

LANGUAGEEN

Claude McKayJamaican American writer, poet (1889–1948)

Festus Claudius McKay (September 15, 1890 – May 22, 1948) was a Jamaican-American writer and poet, and a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Jamaica, McKay first traveled to the United States to attend college, and encountered W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk which stimulated McKay’s interest in political involvement. He moved to New York City in 1914 and in 1919 wrote "If We Must Die", one of his best known works, a widely reprinted sonnet responding to the wave of white-on-black race riots and lynchings following the conclusion of the First World War.