Claude McKay

The Making of a Black Bolshevik

Claude McKay
Winston James
RRP:
NZ$ 60.99
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NZ$ 50.32
Paperback
h235 x 156mm - 464pg
12 Jul 2022 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9780231135931
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One of the foremost Black writers and intellectuals of his era, Claude McKay (1889-1948) was a central figure in Caribbean literature, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Black radical tradition. McKay' s life and writing were defined by his class consciousness and anticolonialism, shaped by his experiences growing up in colonial Jamaica as well as his early career as a writer in Harlem and then London. Dedicated to confronting both racism and capitalist exploitation, he was a critical observer of the Black condition throughout the African diaspora and became a committed Bolshevik. Winston James offers a revelatory account of McKay' s political and intellectual trajectory from his upbringing in Jamaica through the early years of his literary career and radical activism. In 1912, McKay left Jamaica to study in the United States, never to return. James follows McKay' s time at the Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State University, as he discovered the harshness of American racism, and his move to Harlem, where he encountered the ferment of Black cultural and political movements and figures such as Hubert Harrison and Marcus Garvey. McKay left New York for London, where his commitment to revolutionary socialism deepened, culminating in his transformation from Fabian socialist to Bolshevik. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, James offers a rich and detailed chronicle of McKay' s life, political evolution, and the historical, political, and intellectual contexts that shaped him.
A compelling and provocative rendering of the complex transnational racial geographies that shaped the remarkable Claude McKay. Winston James illuminates underexplored features of post-emancipation history and, through exhaustive research, dramatizes the deep entanglements between place and psyche, poetry and politics, violence and hope. -- Honor Ford-Smith, York University The wandering poet and revolutionary socialist Claude McKay was one of the twentieth century' s most captivating writers, noted for his intellectual intensity and emotional depth. Combining unparalleled erudition, literary sensitivity, and political nous, Winston James' s book provides a compelling and authoritative account of the life that McKay made and the circumstances within which he made it. -- Peter Hulme, professor emeritus, University of Essex Meticulously researched and superbly written, this is the premier work on Claude McKay' s astonishing artistic range and diverse passions. It is also an incisive examination of the wider Jamaican and Caribbean colonial context, and a major contribution to the history of the Atlantic world, the Harlem Renaissance, and the overlooked connection with the founders of Negritude. -- Franklin W. Knight, Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professor Emeritus of History, Johns Hopkins University Winston James' s resurrection of the many lives of Claude McKay is a revelation. Page after page, his McKay becomes an increasingly startling figure, never conforming to prevailing expectations. As the narrative gathers pace, McKay shimmers, the life outgrowing the circumstances of his history. The unfolding story presents us with a portrait that is simultaneously compelling and troubling. McKay will never be the same. -- Bill Schwarz, Queen Mary University of London James provides a deep understanding of McKay' s early political formation and radicalization and how these origins structured McKay' s thinking and art. He ably historicizes McKay while retaining a keen sensitivity to McKay' s literary contributions. -- Michelle Ann Stephens, Rutgers University-New Brunswick Elegantly written and carefully reasoned, this is a fascinating look at the political evolution of a key literary figure. * Publishers Weekly * James is a perceptive literary critic, and his close readings are some of the most electrifying parts of The Making of a Black Bolshevik. -- Jennifer Wilson * Dissent Magazine * A powerfully relevant study about an iconoclastic Black thinker and poet who was dedicated to economic reform as well as the eradication of racism. -- Thomas Filbin * The Arts Fuse *
Winston James is the author of A Fierce Hatred of Injustice: Claude McKay' s Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion (2000); The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799-1851 (2010); and Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (second edition, 2020), winner of the Gordon K. Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship of the Caribbean Studies Association. He is also coeditor of and contributor to Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain (1993). James has held teaching positions in the United Kingdom and the United States, most recently as professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780231135931
Published: 12 Jul 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Format: Paperback
Height: 235mm
Width: 156mm
Pages: 464

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