Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance: A Biography

This chapter concludes the study by examining exchanges between African American and Afro-Caribbean contexts, as expressed in Harlem Renaissance texts. Jacques Rancière’s concepts of engaged spectatorship and subject emancipation are used to analyze intra-African Diasporic exchanges in postcolonial contexts. The chapter focuses on works by writers of the Harlem Renaissance with specific attention to their apprehension of Haitian history and folklore as an expression of autochthonomous realities. The chapter argues that what made it possible for Harlem Renaissance writers to identify with cultures and aesthetics produced by other writers and cultures of the African Diaspora was the movement’s professed search and advocacy for an African American sensibility that would birth a “New Negro” not defined by the state, or by a history of subjugation. Works by Zora Neale Hurston and Claude McKay show an impulse that was not one of domination, such as we see reflected in traditional travel texts, but one of af/filiation (as defined in previous chapters).

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The Harlem Renaissance: Arna W. Bontemps, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer

Black American Writers ◽

10.1007/978-1-349-81436-7_5 ◽

1978 ◽

pp. 161-186

Author(s):

Ruth Miller ◽

Peter J. Katopes

Keyword(s):

Harlem Renaissance ◽

James Weldon Johnson ◽

Jean Toomer ◽

Claude Mckay ◽

Countee Cullen ◽

The Harlem Renaissance

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The African-American Poets' Struggle for the Rights of People: A Study in Claude McKay's Selected Poems

Twejer ◽

10.31918/twejer.2033.22 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 821-866

Author(s):

Hameed Abdullah Mustafa ◽

◽

Sherzad Shafi'h Barzani

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

Literary History ◽

Harlem Renaissance ◽

Legal Rights ◽

Claude Mckay ◽

American Experience ◽

Literary Figure ◽

American Poets ◽

The Times ◽

The Harlem Renaissance

This study scrutinizes selected protest poems written by the prominent black poet of the Harlem Renaissance Claude McKay (1889-1948). McKay is considered as a key literary figure of the Negro movement who played a significant role in struggling for and awakening his own people to demand their rights. His major aspiration was to end all forms of prejudice and oppression against blacks portrayed in his poems during the most effective movement in African American literary history comprising the times between 1920 to almost the mid-1930s. McKay established himself as a powerful literary voice for social justice during the Harlem Renaissance constantly struggling for people's identity and rights against the widespread prejudice, segregation, and racism against blacks in America and worldwide along with his pride in his black race and culture. These central issues had different impacts on the Harlem Renaissance and on the lives and works of those who participated in that movement; depicting how both race and racism could deﬁne the African American experience in the early twentieth century, as well. McKay, skillfully combined traditional forms and political protest in many of his sonnets. He took the old poetic genre and made it new and relevant to his own project by examining within its bounds unconventional and contemporary subjects. Along with his poetic diction and imagery, he juxtaposes contrasting images to show the hypocritic nature of America, showing his inevitable faith in the country. McKay's enthusiasm for and belief in the authority of intellectuals was strengthened by his understanding of America's deep-rooted racism. He closes many of his sonnets with gloomy observations of blacks' sufferings. The clear conclusion of his struggle was the fact that negro writers succeeded in showcasing the sufferings of people, incited blacks to demand their legal rights, and proved they are capable of everything and as genius as whites. Keywords: McKay, Struggles, Racism, identity, prejudice, rights.

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