Claude McKay, Code Name Sasha

Queer Black marxism and the Harlem Renaissance

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20002079
AutoresGary Edward Holcomb (autor correspondente)
Ano2007
Páginas288
Data de publicação2007-06-01
Open AccessNão
TipoBOOK
PeriódicoClaude McKay, code name Sasha (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraUniversity Press of Florida (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5744/florida/9780813030494.001.0001
OpenAlexW2339606528
Open LibraryOL17564841M
ISBN9780813030494
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas18

"Sasha" was the code name adopted by Harlem Renaissance writer Claude McKay (1889–1948) to foil investigations of his life and work. Over a period of two decades, the FBI, U.S. State Department, British police and intelligence, and French law enforcement and colonial authorities took turns harassing McKay, an openly gay, Marxist, Jamaican expatriate who had left the United States and was living in Europe. This study of four of McKay's texts—a literary, cultural, and historical analysis to address the multilayered "queer black anarchism" in McKay's writings—argues that McKay's "fringe" perspective not only targeted him for investigation but also contributed to a declining literary reputation. Perceived as mystifying and unacceptable because of his dedication to communism, McKay is perplexing and difficult to classify within the traditional constructs of the Harlem Renaissance. This book analyzes three of the most important works in McKay's career—the Jazz Age bestseller Home to Harlem, the négritude manifesto Banjo, and the unpublished Romance in Marseille. The book uncovers ways in which Home to Harlem assembles a home-front queer black anarchism, and treats Banjo as a novel that portrays Marxist internationalist sexual dissidence. It assesses the consequence of McKay's landmark Romance in Marseille, a text that is, despite its absence from broad public access for nearly 80 years, conceivably the most significant early black Diaspora text. Finally, it examines McKay's extensive FBI file and his late-1930s autobiography,A Long Way from Home, in which McKay disguises his past as a means of eluding his harassers

Art · Art history · Harlem Renaissance · Jazz · Lesbian · Literature · Performance art · Queer · Romance · Sociology · Anarchism and Radical Politics · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Race, History, and American Society · 1890-1948 · 20th century · African americans · Bisexuality in literature · Black nationalism · Black people in literature · Blacks in literature · Claude McKay (1890-1948) · Communism in literature · Criticism and interpretation · Intellectual life · Jamaican Americans · McKay, Claude · Political and social views · Race identity