McKay’s manuscript.
Over the weekend, the New York Times published a piece on a newly discovered 1941 manuscript of a novel by Claude McKay, a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance.
The manuscript, “Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem,” was discovered in a previously untouched university archive and offers an unusual window on the ideas and events (like Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia) that animated Harlem on the cusp of World War II. The two scholars have received permission from the McKay estate to publish the novel, a satire set in 1936, with an introduction about how it was found and its provenance verified.
(…)
“This is a major discovery,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard University scholar, who was one of three experts called upon to examine the novel and supporting research. “It dramatically expands the canon of novels written by Harlem Renaissance writers and, obviously, novels by Claude McKay. “More important, because it was written in the second half of the Harlem Renaissance, it shows that the renaissance continued to be vibrant and creative and turned its focus to international issues — in this case the tensions between Communists, on the one hand, and black nationalists, on the other, for the hearts and minds of black Americans,” said Mr. Gates, the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard.
McKay was also a Catholic convert. In 1999, Commonweal published David Goldweber’s article about McKay’s pilgrimage to Catholicism. It begins:
There have been a good number of conversions of twentieth-century intellectuals to Catholicism, but few are as intriguing as the conversion of the poet, novelist, and critic Claude McKay. Along with Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, McKay is considered one of the great poets of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. A man of contradictions, involved by turns with atheism, homosexuality, Islam, Soviet communism, and Marcus Garvey’s Black Nationalist movement, McKay at last found that for him only Roman Catholicism offered peace, order, wonder, and truth.
If you’d like read the rest, click here (.pdf).
I wonder if today McKay would find Catholicism still offering “peace, order, wonder, and truth” particularly with regard to his homosexuality.
I don’t and most of the LGBT folks born and raised Catholic don’t.
Jim, I know the parish you used to like was sullied by a new appointment. But there are still a number of parishes which cater to lesbians and gays. Like st Francis Xavier in NY. http://www.sfxavier.org/wordpress/parish-groups/parish-groups-2/gay-catholics/
In the early fifties when the national obsession was with communism (now abortion) there was a lot of attention given to the communists recruitment of afro Americans. I remember attending a conference at Fordham where former afro-american communists describe their seduction. People talk about how polarized our times are. In those days anyone who had a liberal viewpoint was accused of being a “pinky communist.” The famous accusations against hollywood actors are a blatant example.
Bill Mazzella:
What you refer to as “obsession” I refer to as alarmed concern. And do you think that former Afro-American Communists were contra-seduced out of Communism?
“Pinky Communist” was a term used by blue-collar non-intellectuals who were genuinely outraged by the treachery of many liberals in their (the liberals’) hatred of America, of free enterprise, of organized religion, … They, the blue-collar working men and women didn’t, and still don’t, have the sophisticated vocabulary and ability to champion their causes to the satisfaction of commonweal intellectuals, but I can assure you they knew what was going on. And as the Venona files have demonstrated, they were largely right; I highly recommend two Yale University Press books:
The Secret World of American Communism and a companion volume, The Soviet World of American Communism
Cheers Bill!
Bill: Yes, I know about that one in NYC. It’s one heck of a weekly communte from here, though.
MHR has a new pastor with cojones and he is organizing a group to be prepared for the next problem. To be prepared is to be forearmed.
People were VERY upset at what happened last Advent and it was a wakeup moment. The biggest allies in this new push are the STRAIGHT members of the parish: pastor, pastoral associated and 3 on the parish council.
I liked the Commonweal story of McKay’s long journey to Catholicism, especially with the possibility of non-spiritual influences mixed in, and the concern for integrity leading to delay, experience, reflection, more delay, more experience, reflection…
In our day, choosing a religion is like deciding what clothes to wear. People do it overnight. Brian Spinx has a book entitled The Worship Mall, because it seems that it’s more and more an affair of consumer choice.
What I was struck by in McKay’s story is that it isn’t a tale of long indecision before different boutiques in the worship mall. And it’s not one of overwhelming enthusiasm carrying him away, either. It’s not even the “therapeutic alternative” — i.e. the religion of choice is the one that helped me when I was down. It’s the story of a tough-minded individual who, having given himself over to one false vision of reality after another, was not about to end his journey by signing onto just one more.
He must have been a difficult person to be around.