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Claude Mckay's 1928 novel, Home to Harlem, is one of the most important works of the Harlem Renaissance. With raw, unflinching candor, McKay explores race, identity, love, and loss and gives voice to the plight of young Black men during the Jazz Age. Jake Brown, a Black American soldier and a World War I deserter, returns to Harlem and struggles to find his place in a vibrant working-class community that's rife with poverty, crime, and racism. He meets various characters, including a displaced Haitian intellectual, prostitutes, hustlers, and jazz musicians, and he experiences everything from love and joy to despair and violence.

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Claude McKay (1889-1948) stands as the first major poet of the Harlem Renaissance—Harlem Shadows, his 1922 collection of poetry, is widely regarded as having launched the movement. But McKay's literary significance goes far beyond his fierce condemnations of racial bigotry and oppression, as is amply demonstrated by the universal appeal of his sonnet, ""If We Must Die,"" recited by Winston Churchill in a speech against the Nazis in World War II. While in Jamaica, McKay produced two works of dialect verse, Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads, that were widely read on the island. In richly authentic dialect, the poet evoked the folksongs and peasant life of his native country. The present volume, meticulously edited and with an introduction by scholar Joan R. Sherman, includes a representative selection of this dialect verse, as well as uncollected poems, and a generous number in standard English from Harlem Shadows.

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