In 1928, Claude McKay published his most famous novel, Home to Harlem, which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature. The novel, which depicted street life in Harlem, would have a major impact on black intellectuals in the Caribbean, West Africa, and Europe.[37]
Home to Harlem gained a substantial readership, especially among people who wanted to know more about the intense, sometimes shocking, details of Harlem nightlife. His novel was an attempt to capture the energetic and intense spirit of the "uprooted black vagabonds." In Home to Harlem, McKay looked among the common people for a black identity.
Despite this, the book drew fire from one of McKay's contemporaries, W. E. B. Du Bois. To Du Bois, the novel's frank depictions of sexuality and the nightlife in Harlem only appealed to the "prurient demand[s]" of white readers and publishers looking for portrayals of black "licentiousness." As Du Bois said, "Home to Harlem... for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath."[37] Modern critics now dismiss this criticism from Du Bois, who was more concerned with using art as propaganda in the struggle for African-American political liberation than in the value of art to showcase the truth about the lives of black people.[38] Home to Harlem entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.[39]
McKay's other novels were Banjo (1929) and Banana Bottom (1933). Banjo includes a portrayal of how the French treated people from its sub-Saharan African colonies and centers on black seamen in Marseilles. Aimé Césaire stated that in Banjo, blacks were described truthfully and without "inhibition or prejudice". Banana Bottom, McKay's third novel, depicts a black individual in search of a cultural identity in a white society. The book discusses the underlying racial and cultural tensions.
McKay also authored a collection of short stories, Gingertown (1932), two autobiographical books, A Long Way from Home (1937) and My Green Hills of Jamaica (published posthumously in 1979), and a non-fiction, socio-historical treatise entitled Harlem: Negro Metropolis (1940). His Selected Poems (1953) represents his selection and arrangement of 1947, but he was unable to find a publisher for it and it appeared posthumously six years later. According to Amardeep Singh's website, Claude McKay's Early Poetry, it was originally published by Bookman & Associates in 1953 with an introduction by John Dewey and subsequently reprinted by Harcourt Brace with the Dewey introduction replaced by a biographical note by Max Eastman.[40]
