Welcome to Litsy!

Last book of 2021! A historical fiction novel about Communists sabotaging Afro-American solidarity efforts with Ethiopia against the Italian invasion. McKay, who was a Caribbean American radical (who helped the Comintern formulate their line on the “Negro Question” in the United States) offers a penetrating and sadly still relevant critique of Stalinism and white chauvinism on the Left. Really interesting book!

Great read.

Harlem Renaissance writer Claude McKay's Amiable with Big Teeth was only just recently published after the manuscript was discovered.

One of the Harlem Renaissance writers. Hopefully I‘ll get to this next year
#AngelOfHarlem #WinterWonderland

Yesterday, I heard Nadifa Mohamed talk about Claude McKay and the Harlem Renaissance.

One thing that really made an impression on me was when she was talking about his troop returning to NYC in 1919. One million people showed up to cheer on the soldiers, but among the cheers one could also hear “how are we going to keep them down now, when they have seen Paris? When they have walked in the front doors?”

Off course I bought his last book, tagged

Starting this today for the posthumously published prompt in Book Riot's #ReadHarder challenge

I saw this at a book store. It looks good. I didn't buy it yet because it was at b&n and id rather give my money to an independent bookstore or at least spend less money. Me and my boyfriend both added it to our tbr lists.

Loved this book. McKay's postumously published novel was written under contract to E.P. Dutton in 1941, but rejected by the publisher. The MSS sat in a drawer for decades until it was discovered a few years ago nestled in the papers of another author. Fascinating novel that covers the period around the fall of Ethiopia to the Italians and the exile of Haile Selassie. Wonderful snapshot of "Aframerican" life in 1930s Harlem.

Day 8 of #riotgrams -- #blackhistory. I just did a Shelf review of this new book written in 1941. It's a time machine, one of those novels that drops you into a specific place in history, and at the same time, so much in it is still all too relevant. If it had come out back then it would be a classic now.

Thrilled that my first edition copy of Claude McKay's lost novel Amiable With Big Teeth arrived yesterday. I'm jumping right in!