Winston James is the author of A Fierce Hatred of Injustice: Claude McKay’s Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion (2000); The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799–1851 (2010); and Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (second edition, 2020), winner of the Gordon K. Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship of the Caribbean Studies Association. He is also coeditor of and contributor to Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain (1993). James has held teaching positions in the United Kingdom and the United States, most recently as professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.

A compelling and provocative rendering of the complex transnational racial geographies that shaped the remarkable Claude McKay. Winston James illuminates underexplored features of post-emancipation history and, through exhaustive research, dramatizes the deep entanglements between place and psyche, poetry and politics, violence and hope.

• List of AbbreviationsAcknowledgmentsProloguePart I: Jamaican Beginnings: The Formation of a Black Fabian, 1889–19121. A Son of the Soil: Jamaica’s Claude McKay2. Holding the Negro in Subjection: Claude McKay’s Jamaica3. You Caan’ Mek We Shet Up: McKay’s Jamaican Poetry of Rebellion4. The Man Who Left Jamaica: Claude McKay in 1912Part II: Coming to America: From Fabianism to Bolshevism, 1912–19195. “Six Silent Years”: McKay and America, 1912–19186. Fighting Back: Claude McKay and the Crisis of 1919Part III: England, Their England: McKay’s British Sojourn, 1919–19217. English Innings and Left-Wing Communism: McKay’s Bolshevization in Britain8. Making Spring in New Hampshire, the 1917 Club, Standing Up, and Thinking of EnglandA CodaNotesIndex

Winston James is the author of A Fierce Hatred of Injustice: Claude McKay’s Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion (2000); The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799–1851 (2010); and Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (second edition, 2020), winner of the Gordon K. Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship of the Caribbean Studies Association. He is also coeditor of and contributor to Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain (1993). James has held teaching positions in the United Kingdom and the United States, most recently as professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.

A compelling and provocative rendering of the complex transnational racial geographies that shaped the remarkable Claude McKay. Winston James illuminates underexplored features of post-emancipation history and, through exhaustive research, dramatizes the deep entanglements between place and psyche, poetry and politics, violence and hope.

• List of AbbreviationsAcknowledgmentsProloguePart I: Jamaican Beginnings: The Formation of a Black Fabian, 1889–19121. A Son of the Soil: Jamaica’s Claude McKay2. Holding the Negro in Subjection: Claude McKay’s Jamaica3. You Caan’ Mek We Shet Up: McKay’s Jamaican Poetry of Rebellion4. The Man Who Left Jamaica: Claude McKay in 1912Part II: Coming to America: From Fabianism to Bolshevism, 1912–19195. “Six Silent Years”: McKay and America, 1912–19186. Fighting Back: Claude McKay and the Crisis of 1919Part III: England, Their England: McKay’s British Sojourn, 1919–19217. English Innings and Left-Wing Communism: McKay’s Bolshevization in Britain8. Making Spring in New Hampshire, the 1917 Club, Standing Up, and Thinking of EnglandA CodaNotesIndex