A Fierce Hatred of Injustice Claude McKay's Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion

by James, Winston; McKay, Claude

• ISBN13: 9781859847404
• ISBN10: 1859847404
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-03-17
• Publisher: VERSO

Summary

Claude McKay remains one of the most influential intellectuals of the African Diaspora. Best remembered for his extraordinary poetry, his achievement in verse has been widely analyzed and praised. Yet in the welter of discussion about McKay, little has been said about his early writing in Jamaican. Two collections from the period, Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads, are more known about than known, and his poems for the Jamaican press, most of which have never been anthologized, are rarely studied. In A Fierce Hatred of Injustice, Winston James elegantly redresses this omission. Through a subtle and detailed consideration of McKay's formative years on the island, James reviews the themes and politics of poetry which McKay began writing at the age of ten. Above all he focuses on the poet's pioneering use of Jamaican creole revealing the way in which this laid a foundation for subsequent work by writers such as Louise Bennett, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Michael Smith. The volume concludes with a comprehensive anthology of the early poems together with a comic sketch about Jamaican peasant life by McKay and an autobiographical essay on his experiences in the Kingston police force.

Author Biography

Winston James is Professor of History at University of California Irvine.

Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and author of numerous works.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	xiii
Prologue	xvii
Part I: Beginnings
A Jamaican Childhood and Youth, 1889 to 1912	3	(52)
Part II: An Analysis of McKay's Jamaican Poetry
Songs of Lament, Songs of Protest: An Introduction	55	(4)
The World of the Struggling Peasant	59	(9)
Constab Blues: Black Consciousness and Black Solidarity	68	(23)
Jamaican Nationalism and its Limits	91	(9)
Emergent Feminist Sympathies	100	(14)
On Cruelty	114	(10)
Religion and Christianity	124	(4)
Thoughts on Africa and Intimations of Negritude	128	(5)
The Weapon of Lyric Poetry	133	(4)
Peasants' Ways o' Thinkin': What is to be Done?	137	(92)
The Politics of Poetic Form and Content within the Colonial Context	139	(13)
When Was McKay Born? A Controversy, a Document and a Resolution	152	(13)
Part III: A Selection of McKay's Jamaican Writing
The Work of a Gifted Jamaican: An Interview with Claude McKay	165	(4)
From Songs of Jamaica	169	(20)
Quashie to Buccra	169	(1)
Whe' Fe Do?	170	(2)
King Banana	172	(1)
Hard Times	173	(1)
Cudjoe Fresh from de Lecture	173	(2)
Old England	175	(1)
A Midnight Woman to the Bobby	176	(1)
Killin' Nanny	177	(1)
My Native Land, My Home	178	(1)
Two-an'-Six	179	(4)
Strokes of the Tamarind Switch	183	(1)
My Pretty Dan	184	(1)
A Country Girl	185	(2)
My Mountain Home	187	(2)
From Constab Ballads	189	(18)
Flat-Foot Drill	189	(1)
De Dog-Driver's Frien'	190	(1)
Papine Corner	191	(2)
Cotch Donkey	193	(1)
A Recruit on the Corpy	194	(1)
Pay-Day	195	(3)
The Apple-Woman's Complaint	198	(1)
The Heart of a Constab	199	(1)
Fe Me Sal	200	(2)
The Bobby to the Sneering Lady	202	(1)
A Labourer's Life Give Me	203	(1)
Sukee River	204	(3)
From the Gleaner and the Jamaica Times	207	(10)
Agnes o' de Village Lane	207	(1)
George William Gordon to the Oppressed Natives	208	(1)
Passive Resistance	209	(1)
Christmas in de Air	210	(1)
Peasants' Ways o' Thinkin'	211	(4)
Bestman's Toast at a Rustic Wedding Feast	215	(2)
From Gingertown	217	(12)
When I Pounded the Pavement	217	(12)
Glossary	229	(2)
List of Abbreviations	231	(2)
Notes	233