McKay, Claude

Abstract

Abstract Claude McKay (1889–1948), a Jamaican‐born colonial exile and key figure of the Harlem Renaissance who also helped inspire the Négritude movement, was a transnational black leftist writer and intellectual whose work explored black identity, racism, class struggle, migration, and the global system of Western colonialism. McKay wrote poetry in Jamaican dialect and traditional English verse forms; short stories; five novels; two memoirs; and two studies of race in the United States. His articles and poems appeared in leftist and revolutionary newspapers and periodicals. A colonial exile from age 22, McKay traveled widely and lived in Harlem and Chicago, major European cities, Soviet Russia, and North Africa. His Harlem Renaissance works include racial protest poems; and his second novel, Banjo , brings together black characters from African countries and the black diaspora. Banana Bottom (1933), the last novel published in McKay's lifetime, is about the protagonist's search for identity and belonging in colonial Jamaica.