Claude McKay and the Harlem Renaissance

From a farming family in Jamaica to travelling in Europe and Northern Africa, the writer Claude McKay became a key figure in the artistic movement of the 1920s dubbed The Harlem Renaissance. Publishing under a pseudonym, his poems including To the White Friends and If We Must Die explored racial prejudice. Johnny Pitts has written an essay about working class community, disability and queer culture explored in Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille, which was published for the first time in 2020. Pearl Cleage's play Blues for an Alabama Sky is set in 1930s New York. The African-American playwright is the daughter of a civil rights activist, and has worked as speechwriter for Alabama's first black mayor, founded and edited the literary magazine Catalyst, and published many novels, plays and essays. Nadifa Mohamed's novels include Black Mamba Boy and her most recent The Fortune Men (shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize). They talk to Shahidha Bari about Claude McKay and the flourishing of ideas and black pride that led to the Harlem Renaissance.

Producer: Tim Bano

Blues For an Alabama Sky runs at the National Theatre in London from September 20th to November 5th.

Johny Pitts presents Open Book on Radio 4. His books include Afropean: Notes from Black Europe which you can hear him discussing on Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005sjw His collaboration with Roger Robinson Home Is Not A Place exploring Black Britishness in the 21st century is out this month.

You can hear more from Nadifa talking about her latest novel The Fortune Men and comparing notes about the writing life with Irenosen Okojie in previous Free Thinking episodes available on our website in the prose and poetry playlist and from BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x06v and https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k8sz

Alongside Verso’s reissue of Home to Harlem they have 3 other books out: Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes, The Blacker The Berry by Wallace Thurman, and Quicksand And Passing by Nella Larson.

On BBC Sounds and in the Free Thinking archives you can find conversations about Black History https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08t2qbp and a Radio 3 Sunday Feature Harlem on Fire in which Afua Hirsch looks at the history of the literary magazine https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06s6z0b