Works Cited and Works Consulted

The flag of Jamaica

This section can be used as a "suggested further reading" list. Those interested in McKay's life once he left Jamaica, or in his Harlem Renaissance poetry, should consult Wayne Cooper's Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance.

Works Cited


Cooper, Wayne, ed. The Dialect Poetry of Claude McKay. Salem: Ayer Company Publishers, Inc., 1987.

Cooper, Wayne F. Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987.

Gayle, Addison, Jr. Claude McKay: The Black Poet at War. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1972.

Hathaway, Heather. Caribbean Waves: Relocating Claude McKay and Paule Marshall. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991.

James, Winston. A Fierce Hatred of Injustice: Claude McKay’s Jamaica and his Poetry of Rebellion. London: Verso, 2000.

Jenkins, Lee M. The Language of Caribbean Poetry: Boundaries of Expression. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.

Maxwell, William J., ed. Complete Poems: Claude McKay. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Tillery, Tyrone. Claude McKay: A Black Poet’s Struggle for Identity. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.

Works Consulted


Chin, Timothy S. “"Bullers" and "Battymen": Contesting Homophobia in Black Popular Culture and Contemporary Caribbean Literature.” Callaloo, 20 (Winter, 1997): 127-141.

Conroy, Mary. “The Vagabond Motif in the Writings of Claude McKay.” Negro American Literature Forum, 5.1 (Spring, 1971): 15-23.

Griffin, Barbara Jackson. “The Last Word: Claude McKay’s Unpublished “Cycle Manuscript.” MELUS, 2.1 (Spring, 1996): 41-57.

Helbling, Mark. “Claude McKay: Art and Politics.” Negro American Literature Forum, 7.2 (Summer, 1973): 49-52.

Keller, James R. “”A Chafing Savage, Down the Decent Street”: The Politics of Compromise in Claude McKay’s Protest Sonnets.” African American Review, 28.3 (Autumn, 1994): 447-456.

Lehman, David, ed. The Oxford Book of American Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Muther, Elizabeth. “”Great, Unappeasable Ghost”: Claude McKay and the Theatre Guild Incident.” Modern Language Studies, 30.2 (Autumn, 2000): 133-157.

Ramazani, Jahan, ed. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.

Ramchand, Kenneth. “Decolonisation in West Indian Literature.” Transition, 22 (1965): 48-49.