Race, Capitalism, and the Third-Sex Ideal: Claude McKay's Home to Harlem and the Legacy of Edward Carpenter

Abstract

Though generally regarded as one of the first African-American bestsellers—achieving five printings in fewer than six months and selling over 50,000 copies—Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (1928) has not received the enthusiastic reception into the African-American canon that its prominent place in literary history should merit. Most critics have either ignored or rejected it, while almost none have accorded it a major position in the lineage of African-American cultural expression. 1 To a large extent, this continued critical neglect is related to the initial charge that the novel was an example of white-authorized racism rather than authentic black cultural expression. In particular, Home to Harlem was thought to be derivative of Carl Van Vechten's sensationalistic depiction of Harlem, Nigger Heaven (1926), a commercially successful work that many black critics felt had exploited white stereotypes of black life. Subsequent evaluations of Home to Harlem have all offered subtle [End Page 825] variations on the extent of McKay's culpability, but almost none have questioned the assumption that his novel must be read solely in terms of its chronological precursor. 2