Although Claude McKay had started to enjoy some fame after his sonnet "If We Must Die" was published but it was 'Home to Harlem' that made him a celebrity and also eased his financial difficulties, though for a brief period only. The depiction of the life in Harlem also attracted the attention of some black leaders in America. For some of them, the emphasis of the novel was on the instinctual and the sensual which was against the general image of respectability which these black leaders have tried to contain among their people. In their opinion, it also reinforced some of the stereotypes that are associated with blacks in particular or their 'primitivism'. The main issue in the debate on Home to Harlem revolved around this issue of primitivism. For example, James Giles treated the novel of McKay seriously for the first time and he had also set the parameters with the publication of The Negro Novel in 1958 on which most of the critical debate concerning McKay fiction, Home to Harlem revolved that it represented the glorification of 'primitive Negro' as well as the apotheosis of instinct over reason (Carby, 738-55).
The primitivism in McKay's novels was intertwined with racial identity and therefore has to be addressed in this context. This primitivism has been politicized in Home to Harlem by the leftist radicalism and the race awareness of McKay. As a result, it becomes a method of recuperating and revaluing whatever is positive and particular concerning the African American consciousness. At this way, it becomes a critique of the morality and culture of middle-class white Americans and as a result, also the political expression of the identity of the blacks. However, women are been excluded from discussion in it and, irrespective of the radical leanings of McKay; primitivism also betrays the entrenchment of the novel in white patriarchal ideology of individualism that forms the basis of the American myth (Du Bois, 359-60).
However this association of Harlem and the blacks residing in it with primitive was not something new when the novel was published. It had been a recurrent motif in both white and black American writers during the 20s. For example, 'Nigger Heaven' of Van Vechten which was published two years before 'Home to Harlem' exploited this primitivism as well as the favorable popularity that the black culture enjoyed during that time. Although, the novel was wrote by McKay when he was in Europe and had spent many years there, he also addressed the issues that were central to the Harlem Renaissance which also contributed in the "New Negro' movement (Lively, 207-35).
It has to be noted that primitive is mainly identified with subaltern communities like the East European Jews, African Americans, women and the working-class which are regulated by conditions created by 'Others'. The Western culture has created different versions of primitive which was in accordance with its own needs and could overcome its obsessions. The discontent with Western values was at a very high level after the First World War and in America, the urban blacks were representing the white middle class as an alternative to degeneracy of the civilization. These changes coincided with the rise of African American radicalism and the work of McKay also participated in these new black ethoses. Therefore there is not only a war with "white folks affair" but it is also related to the second-class status that was accorded to the African-Americans in the Army at the time which reflected their second-class status in society at large in America at that time. Readers are made aware of this right from the very beginning when the job assignment is recalled by Jake where he had to haul lumbers for building barracks (McKay, 50-54).
In this way Jake explains how the blacks were excluded from "meaningful" activities during the war and were made to do only menial jobs and for this reason Jake had decided to desert the Army. The leftist politics of the novel appears again in the fifth chapter when Jake returns to New York and he is employed as a scab worker without his knowledge so that the longshoremen who were on strike could be replaced. The issue of employing black workers as "strikebreakers" and also the issue of "scabbing" that were raised in 'Home to Harlem' were the issues that were the cause of concern among the Unionists and also among the African-American leaders during the 1920s. The reason was that blacks were not allowed to join trade unions and were relegated to the category of chronically unemployed workers; they were forced to work as scab labor on many occasions. In 'Home to Harlem', McKay had elaborated the issues of strikebreaking as well as the anti-Unionist policy adopted by the black leaders in America at that time (Tillery, 134-37).
These episodes in a Home to Harlem show the sensitivity of Mckay towards the problems of the black working-class. The sensitivity was also, at least in part, a result of his own experience as McKay had also done several menial jobs like that of a porter, dining car waiter and stevedore. As a result, McKay had identified with the increasing black working-class. Although, 'Home to Harlem' was a "proletarian" novel, it lacks the similar militant sentiment that can be found in the later proletarian novels during the 30s. Still, McKay had celebrated the black proletarians of Harlem and also their lives and vitality (Rosenblatt, 122-28).
Home to Harlem explores a wide range of 'blackness' including the differences that can be found within the "black" people. It was a challenge in itself, particularly in view of the fact that it refuted the monolithic image held by the whites that all blacks were the same. The novel also calls for colour pride and the different adjectives that have been used to describe colored people give a feeling of diversity that exists between the black culture. Although the blacks in 'Home to Harlem' may not represent the real black people over living in New York City at the time, still McKay had elicited the spirit of black culture as well as the contemporary awakening of this culture. In this way, 'Home to Harlem' has used primitivism on establishing and celebrating new and radical black consciousness that is against the dominant white middle-class American culture.
Works cited:
Carby, Hazel V., "Policing the Black Woman's Body in an Urban Context", Critical Inquiry 18 (Summer 1992): 738-55.
Du Bois, W E.B., "Home to Harlem and Quicksand", Crisis 35 (June 1928). 202. Rpt. in Voices of a Black Nation. Political journalism in the Harlem Renaissance, Ed. Theodore G. Vincent. San Francisco, Rampart Press, 1973, pp. 359-60
Lively, Adam. "Continuity and Radicalism in American Black Thought, 1914-1929", Journal of American Studies 18 (1984) 207-35.
McKay, Claude "Socialism and the Negro", Workers 'Dreadnought, 31 January 1920, Rpt. in The Passion of Claude McKay: Selected Prose and Poetry, 1912-1948. Ed. Wayne Cooper. New York, Schocken Books, 1973. 50-54.
Rosenblatt, Rogers, Black Fiction, Cambridge, Mass., Cambridge University Press, 1974, 122-28
Tillery, Tyrone, Claude McKay: A Black Poets Struggle for Identity. Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.
