Claude McKay real name is Festus Claudius McKay was an important person in the Harlem Renaissance, a prominent literary movement of the 1920s. His poems are traditional in technique and on the sentimental side in subject and tone.1 McKay was born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica, in 1889. McKay was the son of a peasant farmer. He took pride and knew a lot about his African heritage. He was interested in English poetry dealing with literary. McKay’s brother, Uriah Theophilus and an Englishmen Walter Jekyll helped McKay study British masters. McKay studied the British masters including John Milton, Alexander Pope and the later Romantics and European philosophers such as well-known pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer, Jekyll had to translate from German into English. It was Jekyll who advised hopeful poet McKay to stop mimicking the English poets and begin producing poetry in Jamaican dialect. At age seventeen McKay left from Sunny Ville to begin helping as a woodworker in Brown's Town. But he studied there for a short time before leaving to work as a constable in the Jamaican capital, Kingston. In Kingston he experienced constant racism for the first time in his life. His native Sunny Ville was popular by blacks, but in large white Kingston blacks were considered lower and capable of only menial tasks. McKay quickly grew disgusted with the city's society, and within one year he returned home to Sunny Ville. During his brief stays in Brown's Town and Kingston McKay continued writing poetry, and once back in Sunny Ville, with Jekyll's encouragement, he published the Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads in London in 1912. In these two volumes McKay portrays opposing aspects of black life in Jamaica. Songs of Jamaica presents an a... ... middle of paper ... ...as an artist's model. His infection eventually needed to go to the hospital, but after recovering he resumed traveling, and for the next eleven years he toured Europe and portions of northern Africa. During this period he published three novels and a short story collection. The first novel, Home to Harlem, may be his most recognized title. Published in 1928, it concerns a black soldier, Jake, who quickly abandons his military duties and returns home to Harlem. Jake represents, the instinctual aspect of the individual, and his ability to remain true to his feelings enables him to find happiness with a former prostitute, Felice. Mixed with Jake's behavior is that of Ray, an aspiring writer burdened with despair. His sense of bleakness derives largely from his intelligent perspective, and it eventually gets him to leave alien, racist America for his homeland of Haiti.
In addition, after WWI, there were many waves of Jamaican peoples that would come to America. This poem gives background information about the author’s mother and then moves into the authors opinion on
The author was born in Washington D.C. on May 1, 1901. Later, he received a bachelor’s degree from Williams College where he studied traditional literature and explored music like Jazz and the Blues; then had gotten his masters at Harvard. The author is a professor of African American English at Harvard University. The author’s writing
Claude McKay was born on September 15th 1890, in the West Indian island of Jamaica. He was the youngest of eleven children. At the age of ten, he wrote a rhyme of acrostic for an elementary-school gala. He then changed his style and mixed West Indian folk songs with church hymns. At the age of seventeen he met a gentlemen named Walter Jekyll, who encouraged him to write in his native dialect. Jekyll introduced him to a new world of literature. McKay soon left Jamaica and would never return to his homeland.
Prentice Hall Anthology of African American Literature. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000. 163-67. Print.
Gates, Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. Print.
“So much of the great poetry of America is about the neighborhood, and my first neighborhood was Brooklyn New York and i was born in the same house my mother was born in and delivered by the same man”. Biographies are pointless in the art of poetry, poets need no introduction. Simply sitting and reading gives enough imagination to the reader to interpret meaning, feeling, theme and audience. Blending art forms together seems unmethodical much like jazz. However Michael S Harper, a poet known for his syncopation between the African American culture and the African American art form known to many as Jazz uses his abilities to unconsciously weld together these forms of art to state that the African American existence and culture is not and will never be metaphysical. while exploring Harper 's work one can see the argument of existence.
In 1917, the United States found itself buried in a conflict with many different nations. Labeled as World War I, the United States goal was to support the fight for democracy across the world. As the war progressed, there was a need to fulfill many jobs due to the labor shortages that the North had been experiencing. To be more exact, the North received a major labor blow, due to the large enlistment of men into the Army. The draft also helped to cripple the labor supply of the North. The fact that the North was primarily industry based, caused many jobs to become vacant, and created an extremely high demand for an immediate labor force. Large numbers of African Americans migrated from the South to the North in response to the need for a steady labor force, and in hopes of finding economic growth. As World War I ended, many more African Americans migrated from the south to the north due to an overwhelmingly large amount racial tension in the aftermath of the war. This great migration of African Americans, from the south to the north led to black settlements in some of the larger northern industrial cities, such as Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and New York. In about 1920, many of the African Americans who had moved to the north from the south were beginning to embrace the concept of the “New Negro”, which was a movement that was not only a social revolt against racism, but also served as a literary movement, as well as redefined African American expression. This movement better known as the Harlem Renaissance was a key contributor to African Americans, and the way that their roles changed in the United States, on the road to equal rights as well as economic equality. The Harlem Renaissance will forever be remembered as the turning point in African American culture, as well as their place in America today.
James, Johson Weldon. Comp. Henry Louis. Gates and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 832. Print.
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company
In the 1920s, many grand events were experienced by the population. A short time before the start of the Great Depression, this decade was one of prohibition, lavish parties, flappers; and also of the Great Migration. The Great Migration was a time period from 1917 to 1970, during which much of the African American population moved from the southern states, to more urbanized northern communities (Great Migration). While many relocated to the Detroit area because of the booming automotive industries like Ford, some moved to other metropolitan areas such as Chicago, Illinois, and New York City. The surge of the Great Migration helped to initiate what is now known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a period of great accomplishments for the African American community; from music, to art and poetry, and even to dance. This era was also a time during which the birth of racial equality happened. The Savoy Ballroom, located in the heart of the Harlem district, was the birth place of the lindy-hop and the quintessential swing movement, thus making it a crucial part of the Harlem Renaissance, as well as the progression of dance even to this day (Swinging at the Savoy). This
Gates Jr, Henry Louis, and Nellie McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 2nd edition. New York, NY: Norton & Company, 2004
The poem America by Claude McKay is on its surface a poem combining what America should be and what this country stands for, with what it actually is, and the attitude it projects amongst the people. Mckay uses the form of poetry to express how he, as a Jamaican immigrant, feels about America. He characterizes the bittersweet relationship between striving for the American dream, and being denied that dream due to racism. While the America we are meant to see is a beautiful land of opportunity, McKay see’s as an ugly, flawed, system that crushes the hopes and dreams of the African-American people.
Flynn, Jullian. "Chapter 9: Claude McKay " PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. Web. Feb. 24 2014..
1920’s Harlem was a time of contrast and contradiction, on one hand it was a hotbed of crime and vice and on the other it was a time of creativity and rebirth of literature and at this movement’s head was Langston Hughes. Hughes was a torchbearer for the Harlem Renaissance, a literary and musical movement that began in Harlem during the Roaring 20’s that promoted not only African-American culture in the mainstream, but gave African-Americans a sense of identity and pride.
3. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 51: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Trudier Harris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Gale Group, 1987. pp. 133-145.