Claude McKay and Zora Neale

Hurston
ENGL 3002
April 12, 2021
Claude McKay in 1911, published as
frontispiece of Songs of Jamaica
 Claude McKay

Claude McKay's Jamaican English Poetry:

Songs of Jamaica, 1912

Constab Ballads, 1912
Several poems first published in The Gleaner, a
Jamaican periodical.
Preface to Constab Ballads, 1912
• No palm me up, you dutty brute,
You’ jam mount’ mash like ripe bread-fruit;
You fas’n now, but wait lee ya,
I’ll see you grunt under de law.

You t’ink you wise, but we wi’ see;

You not de fus’ one fas’ wid me;
I’ll lib fe see dem tu’n you out,
As sure as you got dat mash’ mout’.

I born right do’n beneat’ de clack

(You ugly brute, you tu’n you’ back?)
Don’ t’ink dat I’m a come-aroun’ ,
I born right ‘way in ‘panish Town.

Care how you try, you caan’ do mo’

Dan many dat was hyah befo’;
Yet whe’ dey all o’ dem te-day?
De buccra dem no kick dem way?
 Ballad Stanzas

– Quatrains, usually rhymed abab or abac, but here aabb

– Usually alternating 4-beat and 3-beat lines, but here all four
beat [could call it iambic tetrameter, or iambic tetrameter
and iambic trimiter.]
– You’ve seen this before: Wordsworth, “She Dwelt Among
Untrodden Ways,” “Strange Fits of Passion I have Known”
– Also, Robert Burns, 18th-C Scottish Poet we haven’t read in
this class but whom McKay loved
– All of Emily Dickinson’s poetry
 William Wordsworth, “Song”

She dwelt among th’untrodden ways 

Beside the springs of Dove, 
A Maid whom there were none to praise 
And very few to love: 

A Violet by a mossy stone 

Half hidden from the Eye! 
—Fair as a star, when only one 
Is shining in the sky! 

She lived unknown, and few could know 

When Lucy ceased to be; 
But she is in her grave, and, Oh, 
The difference to me! 
 Dramatic Monologue

• Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess,” ”Fra

Lippo Lippi”
• Written in what we could call dialect, or
patois, or a form of Jamaican English.
 Robert Burns Wrote in Scots

Verses from “Auld Lang Syne” [“Old Long Since”]

 
• We twa hae run about the braes,
and pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
sin' auld lang syne.
•  
• We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
sin' auld lang syne.
•  
• And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak' a right gude-willie waught,
for auld lang syne.
•  
"A Midnight Woman to the Bobby" [In Songs of
Jamaica]

No palm me up, you dutty brute,

You 'jam mout' mash like ripe bread-fruit;
You fas'n now, but wait lee ya,
I'll see you grunt under de law.
 
[Don't put your hands on me, you dirty brute,
Your damn mouth is mashed like ripe bread fruit;
You're fast now, but wait a little, hear,
I'll see you grunt under the law.]
BTY:
Care how you try, you can’t do mo’
Dan many dat was hyah befo’;
Yet whe’ dey all of dem te-day?
De buccra dem no kick dem ‘way?

[Try as you might, you can’t do more

Than many that was here before;
Yet where are all of them today?
Didn’t the white man kick them away?]
Ko 'pon you jam samplatta nose:
'Cos you wear Mis'r Koshaw clo'es
You t'ink say you's de only man,
Yet fus 'time ko how you be'n 'tan'.
 
[Look at your damn nose that looks like cut leather on a
sandal:
Because you are dressed as a constable
You think you're an important person,
But when I first knew you, see how you looked.]
You big an' ugly ole tu'n-foot
B'en neber know fe wear a boot;
An' chigger nyam you'tumpa toe,
Till nit full i' like herrin' roe.
 
[Your big and ugly old turned-in foot
That had never worn a boot;
And chiggers had eaten into your maimed toe,
Till it completely looked like herring roe.]
Herring Roe, by the way
• You come from mountain naked-‘kin,
An’ Lard a mussy! you be’n thin,
For all de bread-fruit dem be’n done,
Bein’ ‘poil’ up by tearin’ sun:

De coco couldn’ bear at all,

For, Lard! de groun’ was pure white-marl;
An’ t’rough de rain part o’ de year
De mango tree dem couldn’ bear.

An’ when de pinch o’ time you feel

A ‘pur you a you’ chigger heel,
You lef’ you’ district, big an’ coarse,
An’ come join buccra Police Force.
An’ when de pinch o’ time you feel
A ‘pur you a you’ chigger heel,
You lef’ you’ district, big an’ coarse,
An’ come join buccra Police Force.

An’ now you don’t wait fe you’ glass

But trouble me wid you’ jam fas’;
But wait, me frien’, you day wi’ come,
I’ll see you go same lak a some.

Say wha’?—‘res’ me? —you go to hell!

You t’ink Judge don’t know unno well?
You t’ink him gwin’ go sentance me
Widout a soul fe witness i'?
McKay in Moscow, 1922
McKay with radical journalist Max Eastman in Moscow at the Fourth Congress
of the Third International, 1923
 The Harlem Renaissance
This term, “Harlem Renaissance,” indicates the cultural
movement of the 1920s and 1930s in which African-
American writers, artists, and scholars maintained a
vibrant intellectual community centered in Harlem, in
New York City, and promoted African-American
literature, arts, and culture.
 
The Harlem Renaissance actually had much broader
geographical dimensions than its name might indicate,
spanning not only the North and South of the United
States, but anchoring itself firmly in the Caribbean and
stretching itself imaginatively towards Africa and Europe.
First edition, 1925
Alain Locke, editor of The New Negro
 From Alain Locke’s introduction to The New
Negro
“Our greatest rehabilitation may possibly come
through such channels, but for the present,
more immediate hope rests in the revaluation
by white and black alike of the Negro in terms of
his artistic endowments and cultural
contributions, past and prospective” (Locke 15,
italics added).
 Racist Anthropology
“To begin with, black peoples have no historic
past . . . never having evolved civilizations of their
own, they are practically devoid of [an]
accumulated mass of beliefs, thoughts, and
experiences” (Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide
of Color [1920], 91).
 Claude McKay’s major novels:
• Home to Harlem, 1928

• Banjo, 1929
• Banana Bottom, 1933
• Recently published: Amiable With Big Teeth
and Romance in Marseille
 "If We Must Die"
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
•  
• Shakespearean Sonnet: abab cdcd efef gg
• 3 quatrains
• Ending couplet

• Associated with 1. the great literary tradition

and 2. constraint
 Wordsworth flashback

• “Nuns Fret not at their Convent’s Narrow Room”

“In truth, the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence to me,
In sundry moods, ‘twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground:
Pleas’d if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find short solace there, as I have found.”
 "If We Must Die"
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Zora Neale Hurston
“How could the recipient of two Guggenheims
and the author of four novels, a dozen short
stories, two musicals, two books on black
mythology, dozens of essays, and a prizewinning
autobiography virtually ‘disappear’ from her
readership for three full decades?” (Henry
Louise Gates, afterword to Mules and Men, 290).
Novelist Richard Wright criticized Hurston’s
novel for “carry[ing] no theme, no message, no
thought” (1937).

Hurston’s response: she writing a Black novel,

“not a treatise on sociology” (Mules and Men
292).
Franz Boas in The Mind of Primitive Man (1911),
"there is no close relation between race and
culture.”

Boas propagated the “culture concept,” which is the

idea that cultures should be assessed according to
their own terms, rather than on a European scale
ranking them in terms of “civilization.” This idea also
sometimes goes by the name of cultural relativism.
Hurston's major works of fiction

Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934)

Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939) 

Hurston's major works as a folklorist:

 
Mules and Men (1935)- American South
Tell My Horse (1938) – Haiti and Jamaica
 From Mules and Men
“New Orleans is now and has ever been the hoodoo
capital of America. Great names in rites that vie with those of
Hayti in deeds that keep alive the power of Africa.
Hoodoo, or Voodoo, as pronounced by the whites, is
burning with a flame in America, with all the intensity of a
suppressed religion. It has its thousands of secret adherents.
It adapts itself like Christianity to its locale, reclaiming some
of its borrows characteristics to itself, such as fire-worship as
signified in the Christian church by the altar and the candles
and the belief in the power of water to sanctify as in baptism.
Belief in magic is older than writing. So nobody knows how
it started.” (Mules and Men 183)
 On the English language in, "Characteristics of
Negro Expression” (1934)
"the American Negro has done wonders to the
English language. . . . [H]e has made over a great
part of the tongue to his liking and has his
revision accepted by the ruling class. No one
listening to a Southern white man talk could
deny this."
 
 “Spunk”
- First published in the edition of Opportunity,
then The New Negro, 1925
“’Call her,’ he says to Joe. ‘Call and see if she’ll come.
A woman knows her boss an’ she answers when he
calls.” [Joe calls, she looks disgusted]
“Lena, youse mine. From now on Ah works for you
an’ fights for you an’ Ah never wants you to look to
nobody for a crumb of bread, a stitch of close or a
shingle to go over yo’ head, but me as long as Ah live.
Ah’ll git the lumber for owah house tomorrow. Go
home an’ git yo’ things together.”  
“Thass mah house,’ Lena speaks up. ‘Papa gimme
that” (28).
"A clear case of self-defense, the trial was a
short one, and Spunk walked out of the court
house to freedom again” (29).
“Well, night befo’ las’ was the fust night Spunk an’
Lena moved together an’ jus’ as they was goin’ to
bed, a big black bob-cat, black all over, you hear
me, black, walked round and round that house and
howled like forty, an‘ when Spunk got his gun an’
went to the winder to shoot it he says it stood right
still an’ looked him in the eye, an’ howled right at
him. The thing got Spunk so nervoused up he
couldn’t shoot. But Spunk says twan’t no bob-cat
nohow. He says it was Joe done sneaked back from
Hell! ” (30)
Industrial Accidents Routine at the Mill

“When Tes’ Miller got cut to giblets on that

circle-saw, Spunk steps right up and starts ridin’.
The rest of us was skeered to go near it.” (26)
“The Gilded Six Bits”
image from a 2010 film by Booker T. Mattison
• 1933: FDR took US off the gold standard
• “Free Silver movement” advocated minting a
bigger supply of money out of silver.
• Joe Banks uses silver coins
• Otis D. Slemmons coats silver coins in gold.
“He’s got a five-dollar gold piece for a stick-pin
and he got a ten-dollar gold piece on his watch
chain and his mouf is jes’ crammed full of gold
teeth” (90),
From the “Glossary” of Mules and Men:
”Jack or John (not John Henry) is the great human culture hero in
Negro folklore. He is like Daniel in Jewish folklore, the wish-
fulfillment hero of the race. The one who, nevertheless, or in
spite of laughter, usually defeats Ole Massa, God and the Devil.
Even when Massa seems to have him in a hopeless dilemma he
wins out by a trick. Brer Rabbit, Jack (or John) and the Devil are
continuations of the same thing” (247)
 “High John De Conquer,” The American Mercury, 1943

"Maybe, now, we used-to-be black African folks can be of some

help to our brothers and sisters who have always been white.
You will take another look at us and say that we are still black,
and, ethnologically speaking, you will be right. But nationally and
culturally, we are as white as the next one. We have put our
labor and our blood into the common cause for a long time. We
have given the rest of the nation song and laughter. Maybe now,
in this terrible struggle, we can give something else--the source
and soul of our laughter and song. We offer you our hope-
bringer, High John de Conquer" (139).
• ". . . he lived on the plantation where their old folks were
slaves. He is not so well known to the present generation of
colored people in the same way that he was in slavery time.
Like King Arthur of England, he has served his people, and
gone back into mystery again. And, like King Arthur, he is not
dead. He waits to return when his people shall call again.
Symbolic of English power, Arthur came out of the water, and
with Excalibur, went back into the water again. High John de
Conquer went back to Africa, but he left his power here, and
placed his American dwelling in the root of a certain plant.
Only possesses that root, and he can be summoned at any
time" (142).
“Old Massa couldn’t know, of course, but High
John de Conquer was there walking his
plantation like a natural man. He was treading
the sweat-flavored clods of the plantation,
crushing out his drum tunes, and giving out
secret laughter. He walked on the winds and
moved fast. Maybe he was in Texas when the
lash fell on a slave in Alabama, but before the
blood was dry on the back he was there” (140).
• "These young Negroes reads they books and talk
about the war freeing the Negroes, but Aye, Lord! A
heap sees, but a few knows. 'Course the war was a lot
of help, but how come the war took place? They think
they knows, but they don't. John de Conquer had
done put it into white folks to give us our freedom,
that's what. Old Massa fought against it, but us could
have told him that it wasn't no use. Freedom just had
to come. The time set aside for it was there. The war
was just a sign and a symbol of the thing" (143).
• "So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of
courage that endures, and laughter. High John de Conquer. If the
news from overseas reads bad, and the nation inside seems like it
is stuck in the Tar Baby, listen hard, and you will hear John de
Conquer treading on his singing-drum. You will know then, that no
matter how bad things look now, it will be worse for those who
seek to oppress us. Even if your hair comes yellow, and your eyes
are blue, John de Conquer will be working for you just the same.
From his secret place, he is working for all America now. We are all
his kinfolk. Just be sure our cause is right, then you can lean back
and say, 'John de Conquer would know what to do in a case like
this, and then he would finish it off with a laugh.'" (148)