The first study devoted to the prose of a preeminent, genre-defying Harlem Renaissance writer
In Harlem's Transnational Pioneer, Matthew L. Miller argues that, although Claude McKay is well known as an immigrant writer and poet of the Harlem Renaissance, he pioneered a transnational literary aesthetic that exceeds existing literary labels. Linking these works through the author's representations of marginalized people, his critique of European and American colonialism and racism, and his artistic innovations in subject matter and style, Miller contends that the transnational aesthetic serves as a throughline in McKay's body of work in prose.
Claude McKay's fiction and nonfiction reveal a transnational writer who uniquely expresses the complexities of race, immigration, politics, culture, and art. Born in Jamaica in 1890, McKay came to the United States in 1912 to study at the Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State Agricultural College before moving to New York City. He later lived and traveled in England, France, the Soviet Union, and Morocco, eventually returning to the United States, developing a transnational identity and understanding of the African diaspora that would inform his writing throughout his life.
Miller begins by analyzing McKay's sense of his own identity as it emerged through his nonfiction essays and memoirs. In the early novels Home to Harlem and Banjo, Miller identifies a "vagabond philosophy" that claims travel as a means of temporary liberation from racism, colonialism, and oppression. Miller then traces the evolution of McKay's transnational aesthetic through Romance in Marseille; the short story collection, Gingertown; and Banana Bottom, where this aesthetic reaches its high point in McKay's deconstruction of cultural binaries and celebration of the best qualities of Afro-Caribbean and Euro-American culture. Miller concludes his analysis with an extensive reading of Amiable with Big Teeth, which signifies Black transnationalism in fabulist forms. Finally, the book ends with a discussion of McKay's legacy in an age of censorship and surveillance.
Matthew L. Miller is professor of English at University of South Carolina Aiken. He is editor of Class, Please Open Your Comics and has published articles in Ethnic Studies Review, The Griot, and Notes on Contemporary Literature.
