A Long Way from Home (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the Americas)

McKay's account of his long odyssey from Jamaica to Harlem and then on to France, Britain, North Africa, Russia, and finally back to America. As well as depicting his own experiences, the author describes his encounters with such notable personalities as Charlie Chaplin, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Leon Trotsky, W. E. B. Du Bois, Isadora Duncan, Paul Robeson, and Sinclair Lewis. Claude McKay (1889-1948) was one of the most prolific and sophisticated African American writers of the early twentieth century. A Jamaican-born author of poetry, short stories, novels, and nonfiction, McKay has often been associated with the "New Negro" or Harlem Renaissance, a movement of African American art, culture, and intellectualism between World War I and the Great Depression. But his relationship to the movement was complex. Literally absent from Harlem during that period, he devoted most of his time to traveling through Europe, Russia, and Africa during the 1920s and 1930s. His active participation in Communist groups and the radical Left also encouraged certain opinions on race and class that strained his relationship to the Harlem Renaissance and its black intelligentsia. In his 1937 autobiography, A Long Way from Home, McKay explains what it means to be a black "rebel sojourner" and presents one of the first unflattering, yet informative, exposés of the Harlem Renaissance. Reprinted here with a critical introduction by Gene Andrew Jarrett, this book will challenge readers to rethink McKay's articulation of identity, art, race, and politics and situate these topics in terms of his oeuvre and his literary contemporaries between the world wars An autobiography that explains what it means to be a black ""rebel sojourner"" and presents the exposes of the Harlem Renaissance. This book challenges readers to rethink the author's articulation of identity, art, race, and politics and situate these topics in terms of his oeuvre and his literary contemporaries between the World Wars. Claude Mckay ; Edited And With An Introduction By Gene Andrew Jarrett. Originally Published: New York : L. Furman, Inc., 1937. With New Introd. And Notes. Includes Bibliographical References. A Jamaican-born writer describes his experiences traveling throughout the world following World War I, and recalls his friendships with celebrities of the Twenties and Thirties.