Gingertown
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1932. First edition. Hardcover with illustrated red and navy boards with black spine and brown lettering, no dust jacket, 8vo, 274 pp.
Signed First Edition of McKay's sole collection of short fiction. Gingertown consists of tales depicting McKay's worlds up to 1932: his adopted home of Harlem and his native Jamaica.
After his parents moved from their native Madagascar, Claude McKay was born in Jamaica in 1890 before migrating to Charleston, SC in 1912 to attend the Tuskegee Institute and then New York City in 1914 where he became a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance; as well as IWW member, co-editor of The Liberator, and published author. His first two novels, Home to Harlem (1928) and Banjo (1929), along with previously published poetry, preceded the release of Gingertown in 1932. McKay also wrote for Sylvia Pankhurst's newspaper The Workers' Dreadnought, critically examining Black sexuality, gender roles, and Black Nationalism in relation to Communist ideology. He also wrote for Max and Crystal Eastman's paper, The Liberator.
McKay was committed to promoting the international left's alignment with anti-colonial movements, in the American Communist Party, at the Communist International Congress in the Soviet Union in 1922. These ideas were demonstrated in the 1920 Dreadnought article "Socialism and the Negro", where McKay urged British socialists to adopt anti-colonization measures. McKay advocated for black agency in his political activities and literature and faced severe criticism his whole life even posthumously when his Communist involvement was questioned in state hearings despite his leaving the CPA in the 1930s, disenchanted and demoralized over the lack of commitment to the anti-colonial struggle. Good, tattered spine ends, edges worn and rubbed, adhesive marks to cover and pastedowns, light foxing, former copy of the Traver's Bookstore Library stamped on the end papers, signed to half-title. / No jacket. Item #978
Price: $1,000.00