Long Way from Home

From one of the most significant figures of the Harlem Renaissance comes a narrative defining book chronicling his life from Jamaica to New York City

Claude McKay’s long odyssey from Jamaica to Harlem, Europe, North Africa, Russia, and back to America is chronicled in this autobiography of the most militant writers to emerge from the New Negro movement following World War I. Whether in the intellectual circles of Harlem and Greenwich Village, the docks of Marseilles, or the inner circles of post-revolutionary Russia, McKay’s contact with such figures as Frank Harris, Max Eastman, George Bernard Shaw, W.E.B Dubois, James Weldon Johnson, Charles Chaplin, H.G Wells, Sinclair Lewis, Trotsky, and Radek all served to advance those views which would be so widely accepted in the 1960—Black Pride, self-determination, and the necessity for Black culture to define itself. 

Claude McKay was a writer and poet. Born in Jamaica in 1889 to peasant farmers, he wrote poetry and fiction about Black life in Jamaica and America. His books include Harlem Shadows (1922); Constab Ballads (1912); and Songs of Jamaica (1912), as well as a number of novels and short-story collections. A key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, he was also involved in many social causes, particularly in the fight for racial justice. He died in Chicago in 1948.