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Letters in Exile

Letters in Exile

0 - Default Title
Description
A collection of private correspondence from one of the Harlem Renaissance's brightest and most radical voices   The Jamaican-born, queer author Claude McKay (1890-1948) was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. His 1919 poem "If We Must Die" expressed a revolutionary vision for militant Black protest art, while his novels, including Home to Harlem, Banjo, and Banana Bottom, described ordinary Black life in lyrical prose. Yet for all that McKay connected himself to Harlem, he was a restless world traveler who sought spiritual, artistic, and political sustenance in France, Spain, Moscow, and Morocco.   Brooks E. Hefner and Gary Edward Holcomb bring together two decades of McKay's never-before-published dispatches from the road with correspondents including W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Max Eastman, and Louise Bryant. With wit, wisdom, insight, and sometimes irascible temper, McKay describes how he endured harassment from British authorities in London and worked alongside Leon Trotsky and Alexander Kerensky in Bolshevik Moscow. He reflects on Paris's Lost Generation, immerses himself in the Marseille dockers' noir subculture, and observes French colonialism in Morocco. Providing a new perspective on a unique figure of American modernism, this collection reveals McKay gossiping, cajoling, and confiding as he engages in spirited debates and challenges the political and artistic questions of the day.
Product details
Edition:
1
Number of Pages:
512
Release Date:
2025-09-02
Publication Date:
2025-10-28
Publisher:
Yale University Press
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0300276478
ISBN13:
9780300276473
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
Weight:
884 g
Height:
165 cm
Width:
239 cm
Thickness:
40 cm
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