McKay's Home To Harlem and Haiti

Claude McKay c. 1928

I would be lying if I denied that the only reason I read Claude McKay's Home To Harlem is the Haitian character, Raymond. Set in Harlem after WWI, the 1928 novel explores Harlem and black life in the aftermath of the war, focusing on the seedy underworld of urban black life. McKay's short novel includes a Haitian character from an upper-class background as an important foil for the protagonist, Jake, mainly in the second part of the three-part text. Raymond, who has to work on the railroad as a waiter, is only in the US because he was a student at Howard University, but his father was jailed for opposing the US Occupation and his brother was killed for the same reason. Therefore, Ray has to work to save up money for his education as his family lost their income in Haiti. 

When Jake meets Ray, he is exposed to a much larger black world and history, learning for the first time about the Haitian Revolution as a noble event in the course of human history, as well as the importance of sovereign black states, such as Abyssinia and Liberia. This introduction to pan-Africanist discourse via Ray piques Jake's interest, who now wishes he was educated and well-read like his Haitian friend. The reason I see them as counterparts is in how they unite the two strands of black masculinity: refined, educated, and international through Ray and domestic, hardworking, uneducated and 'primitive' Jake. McKay's use of primitivism in this text (which is used most often when describing jazz and blues in the clubs and cabarets of Harlem) should not necessarily be seen in a negative light, for in the text the 'primitive' blues, jazz, dance, drugs, and unmasked passion of black Harlem (and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) is seen as authentic, real, and connecting individuals instead of the cold, distant 'civilization' of whites. Indeed, some of the descriptions used by McKay for the dancing in cabarets and buffet flats sound like Vodou or African ceremonies and rituals, evidence of African retentions and 'spirit' in the African Diaspora.

Perhaps like other intellectuals, McKay's use of the 'primitive' is part of the general response to the destruction of the First World War, when some thinkers began to question European civilization's level of sophistication and looked to the East or South for alternatives to the West. This, I believe, is where Haiti comes in as a symbol for black liberation and an alternative path, albeit one that is not fully explored in the novel. Ray himself, an educated man, also begins to question his Western education, since it makes him a misfit, as well as question why race is thrust upon him and his own self-distancing from African-Americans, who he admits to looking condescendingly upon for being under the white Anglo-Saxon American's yoke. Yet, Haiti at the same time is under US white rule, and Ray's identity crisis leads to some black solidarity across national or cultural barriers. 

To be honest, I was quite disappointed in McKay's Ray, who, as a complex, nuanced being, captures the multiplicity of forms blackness encompasses, but does not outright or directly work against US Occupation. Furthermore, Jake, who begins to see Ray as his best friend during their time together working on the dining car of the trains, never opposes the US Occupation, so politically speaking, the novel lacks the overt tone of black militancy of McKay's famous poem, which, like this novel does on a subtle level, capture the attitude of the New Negro after World War I, a conflict in which blacks from the US were doubly oppressed. In McKay's defense, the novel is centered on Jake and the Harlem world, so one can understand why Ray's crisis, which is certainly aligned with the themes of the novel, is relegated to the background and ultimately resolved by Ray choosing to work on a freighter, escaping the Harlem, Haiti, and living on the seas in search of freedom while still yearning to write. Ray learns to overcome his classism and moral judgment of others, however, as demonstrated by his admiration for the pimp, Jerco. 

Jake, on the other hand, finds the love of his lie and simple, domestic companionship he desires, and decides to leave 'home' away from Harlem, en route to Chicago. Jake, who experienced the docks of Europe, and the white man's savagery committed against blacks and whites in London's East End bars and brothels, knows fully well that violence transcends racial boundaries, and finds himself still searching for 'home' in Harlem only to realize that his 'home' is elsewhere, somewhere he can find the peace Ray desires in his own way, perhaps the very same alternative to Western civilization. Haiti's role as a symbol and object of pan-Africanist concern is clearly important in this context, and plays an important role in how McKay constructs a plausible black world where color, class, nationality, and gender divide Harlem's Black Belt. Like his other work, the militancy also encompasses labor, hinting at McKay's leftist interests at the time,  as well as black progress.

Favorite Quotes

"He preferred white folks' hatred to their friendly contempt." (141)

"But the Congo remained in spite of formidable opposition and foreign exploitation. The Congo was a real throbbing little Africa in New York." (151)

"Jake felt like one passing through a dream, vivid in rich, varied colors. It was revelation beautiful in his mind. That brief account of an island of savage black people, who fought for collective liberty and were struggling to create a culture of their own. A romance of his race, just down there by Panama. How strange!" (201)

"Ray felt that as he was conscious of being black and impotent, so, correspondingly, each marine down in Hayti must be conscious of being white and powerful." (210)

"He remembered when little Hayti was floundering uncontrolled, how proud he was to be the son of a free nation. He used to feel condescendingly sorry for those poor African natives; superior to ten millions of suppressed Yankee "coons." Now he was just one of them and he hated them for being one of them..." (210)

"African hate is deep down and hard to stir up, but there is no hate more realistic when it is stirred up." (221)