Home to Harlem:

No Longer
Forgotten

Tyree F. Watkins
English 6007
Dr. Anne Boyd Rioux
08/24/2019 Source: https://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/new-comic-book-series-tackles-race-and-monster-hunting-in-the-harlem-
renaissance/Content?oid=25484821
1
The Author:
Claude McKay
• Jamaican immigrant
• Published books of poetry
• Arrival in the United States
in 1912
• Published Home to Harlem

2
 Lead up to 3

Home to Harlem
• Rejection of Color Scheme
• Submission of short stories
to Harper and Brothers
• Assistance from William
Bradley
• “Home to Harlem” vs.
Home to Harlem

3
 Creation of
Home to Harlem
• Personal experiences used to
develop the novel
 “Snowstorm in Pittsburgh”

• Used material from his short

stories to flesh out the novel
 “He Also Loved”

4
 Publication of
Home to Harlem
• Very little editing of the
content
• Published in 1928
• Published at height of
Harlem Renaissance

5
“I see Home to
Harlem like an
impudent dog has
[moved] right in
among the best
sellers in New
York.”
- Claude McKay
6
 Positive John R. Chamberlain of
the New York Times Burton Rascoe

Reception
• Received well by White reviewers
Jan. 20YY Feb. 20YY Mar. 20YY

Louis Sherwin of the New

York Sun

7
 8

Controversy
• Motives questioned
• By readers

• By critics

• Condemned by Black reviewers

8
 Negative W.E.B. Dubois for
The Crisis
Dewey Jones for the
Chicago Defender

Criticism
• Black critics’ objections
Jan. 20YY Feb. 20YY Mar. 20YY

William Ferris

9
 The Death of
Home to Harlem
• The Great Depression
Award description Award description Award description
• Fewer Whites spending money
on Black entertainment
• Less support from civil rights
organizations
• Less attention from Black press
• Change in literary tastes
10
• Rise of other Black writers Award description Award description Award description
Rediscovery of
Home to Harlem
• Soviet Union State Press
• Release of The New Negro:
Readings on Race, Representation,
and African American Culture,
1892–1938
• Queer theory
• Unpublished manuscript found
11
Recent Criticism
From the 1980’s to
the present

12
“It will take the Negro in
America another thirty or
forty years to see Home to
Harlem in its true light —
to appreciate it in the spirit
in which I wrote it.”
- Claude McKay
 Works Cited
Borrelli, Christopher. “Why You Should Know Harlem Renaissance Writer Claude McKay. Even If You’ve Never Heard of Him.” Chicago Tribune, 13 Feb. 2017,

https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-claude-mckay-ent-0214-20170213-column.html. Accessed 22 Aug. 2019. 

Briggs, Gabriel A. “Reviewed Work(s): The New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892-1938 by Henry Louis Gates and Gene Andrew Jarrett.” The
14
New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892-1938, by Henry Louis Gates and Gene Andrew Jarrett. Callaloo, vol. 32, no. 1, 2009, pp. 322–325.

JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27655131.

Chancy, Miriam. “Claude McKay.” Oxford Bibliographies Online, 10 March 2015. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199827251/obo-9780199827251-0104.xml.

Accessed 24 Aug. 2019.

Cooper, Wayne F. Claude McKay, Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance: A Biography, e-book, LSU Press, 1996.

Cooper, Wayne F. Foreword. Home to Harlem, by Claude McKay, e-book, Northeastern University Press, 1987.

Giles, James R. Claude McKay. Twayne Publishers, 1976.

Hunt, Douglas L. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 140, 1928, pp. 339–340. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1016866.

McLeod, A. L. “Home to Harlem by Claude McKay.” Salem Press Encyclopedia of Literature, 2019. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=ers&AN=119621846&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Rottenberg, Catherine. “Writing from the Margins of the Margins: Michael Gold's Jews Without Money and Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem.” MELUS, vol. 35, no. 1, 2010, pp. 119–140. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/40587213.