Born in Jamaica and living in New York, McKay writes of homesickness for the tropics, of the city’s lights and loneliness, of a waiter dressing for work, and of America itself, which he admits he loves even as it feeds him bitterness. Formal sonnets carry hard feeling about race and exile, introduced by Max Eastman.
A founding book of the Harlem Renaissance, and the collection that carries McKay’s defiant sonnet If We Must Die. Download the free EPUB.