Biography of claude mckay

While living with Uriah, McKay became an ardent reader of British and classical literature, as well as science, theology, and philosophy. When he turned ten, McKay started writing poetry. InMcKay became an apprentice to a cabinet and carriage maker known as Old Brenga, and stayed in his service for almost for two years. During that apprenticeship, McKay encountered a man named Walter Jekyll who became a mentor and a source of inspiration for him.

Jekyll motivated McKay to focus on his writing. Biography [ edit ]. Early life in Jamaica [ edit ]. First stay in the US [ edit ]. Sojourn in the United Kingdom [ edit ]. Trip to Russia [ edit ]. Later travels [ edit ]. Later life [ edit ]. Literary movements and traditions [ edit ]. Political views and social activism [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ].

Sexuality [ edit ]. Last years and death [ edit ]. Works [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. Awards [ edit ]. Selected biography of claude mckay [ edit ]. Poetry collections [ edit ]. Fiction [ edit ]. Non-fiction [ edit ]. Unknown manuscript [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. As Cooper's authoritative biography explains, McKay's family predated his birth a year to make him eligible to be a student teaching assistant at his eldest brother's school, a fact McKay only learned from his sister Rachel in -- leading some sources to erroneously date his birth to Small Axe.

ISSN S2CID JSTOR Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN University of Massachusetts Press, February 1, LSU Press. Retrieved December 4, Retrieved January 25, Five Novels of the sLibrary of America, p. ISBN X. Durham, N. Retrieved August 18, New York: Columbia University Press. OCLC Poetry Foundation. Retrieved January 16, ProQuest Kindle Edition.

May 27, Archived from the original on May 27, A Long Way from Home. Rutgers University Press. Retrieved March 26, Modernism and Race. Cambridge University Press. International Press Correspondence. Banjo, a story without a plot. George A. Smathers Libraries University of Florida. The Space Between. IV:I : 63— Harris featured four poems and a short prose piece about his biography and poetics, in the September issue of the magazine, McKay's first prominent appearance in print.

As co-editor of The Liberator, he published one of his most famous poems, "If We Must Die", during the "Red Summer", a period of intense racial violence against black people in Anglo-American societies. He also became involved with a group of black radicals who were unhappy both with Marcus Garvey's nationalism and the middle-class reformist NAACP.

Moore, and Wilfred Domingo. They fought for black self-determination within the context of socialist revolution. Together they founded a semi-secret revolutionary organization, the African Blood Brotherhood. Hubert Harrison had asked McKay to write for Garvey's Negro World, but only a few copies of the paper have survived from this period, none of which contain any articles by McKay.

In early fall McKay traveled to London, perhaps prompted by pressure from the Justice Department which was engaged in a nationwide attack on pacifists, socialists and labor organizers the "Palmer Raids" which especially targeted the IWW. A militant atheist, he also joined the Rationalist Press Association, who had published two of Walter Jekyll's books.

It was during this period that his commitment to socialism deepened and he read Marx assiduously. McKay was soon invited to write for Pankhurst's magazine, Workers' Dreadnought. In Aprilthe Daily Herald, a socialist paper published by George Lansbury, included a racist article written by E. Lansbury refused to print McKay's response, so McKay did so in Workers' Dreadnought, writing: Why this obscene maniacal outburst about the sex vitality of black men in a proletarian paper?

Rape is rape; the colour of the skin doesn't make it different. Negroes are no more over-sexed than Caucasians; mulatto children in the West Indies and America were not the result of parthenogenesis. If Negro troops had syphilis, they contracted it from the white and yellow races. As for German women, in their economic plight, they were selling themselves to anyone.

I do not protest because I happen to be a Negro I write because I feel that the ultimate result of your propaganda will be further strife and blood-spilling between whites and the many members of my race Bourbons of the United States will thank you, and the proletarian underworld of London will certainly gloat over the scoop of the Christian-Socialist pacifist Daily Herald.

He became a paid journalist for the paper. At this time he also had some of his poetry published in the Cambridge Magazine, edited by C. When Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act for publishing articles "calculated and likely to cause sedition among His Majesty's forces, in the Navy, and among the civilian population," McKay had his rooms searched.

He is likely to have been the author of "The Yellow Peril and the Dockers" attributed to "Leon Lopez", which was one of the articles cited by the government in its case against Workers' Dreadnought. In Novemberin what he referred to as his "Magic Pilgrimage," he traveled to Russia to participate in the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in Petrograd and Moscow, where he encountered Max Eastman who was also a delegate.

McKay financed his trip to Russia by repackaging and selling Harlem Shadows, "complete with a signed photograph and an inflated price tag" to members of an NAACP donor list and conserved the funds thus raised by biography of claude mckay his way across the Atlantic from New York to Liverpool as a stoker on a freighter. He was greeted in Russia with what one historian characterized as "ecstatic welcome" and "rock-star treatment.

Before this journey, he went to Paris, where he contracted a severe respiratory infection and required hospitalization. After recovering he continued traveling, and for 11 years ventured around Europe and parts of Northern Africa. During this stint he published three novels, the most notable of which was Home to Harlem, in Reception to the novel varied.

In The Negro Novel in America, Robert Bone wrote that it represented "different ways of rebelling against Western civilization", adding that McKay was not entirely successful in articulating his protagonists. However, other people thought that the novel provided a detailed portrayal of the underside of black urban life, with its prostitutes and gamblers.

He also wrote Banana Bottom during this year span. Here McKay presented a clear depiction of his principal theme, that black individuals quest for cultural identity in a white society.

Biography of claude mckay

His final year abroad saw the creation of Gingertown, a collection of 12 short stories. Half of these tales depict his life in Harlem and the others revolve around his time in Jamaica. Later life McKay became an American citizen in In McKay started "Cycle Manuscript", a collection of 54 poems, all but four of them sonnets, often with political subjects and often in tones of satiric invective.

After the manuscript was rejected by Harper and Dutton, he wrote to his old friend and editor Max Eastman, asking him "to look through" all the poems and to make any needed revisions. Despite Eastman's efforts, McKay's collection was not published during his lifetime. It is included in his posthumous Complete Poems. Its editor William J.

Maxwell discusses this manuscript's history in an extended note. Home to Harlem was the most popular of the three, though all were well received by critics. Returning to Harlem, McKay began work on an autobiography entitled A Long Way from Homewhich focuses on his experiences as an oppressed minority and agitates for a broad movement against colonialism and segregation.

The book has been criticized for its less-than-candid treatment of some of McKay's more controversial interests and beliefs. His consistent denial of having joined the Communist Party, despite multiple trips to the Soviet Union, is a point of particular contention. McKay went through several changes toward the end of his life. He embraced Catholicism, retreating from Communism entirely, and officially became an American citizen in His experiences working with Catholic relief organizations in New York inspired a new essay collection, Harlem: Negro Metropoliswhich offers observations and analysis of the African American community in Harlem at the time.

McKay died of a heart attack in Chicago, Illinois, on May 22,