The Last One

Our homeland impacts us more than we could ever imagine. I have had a yearning to return to Scotland for many years now having only been once when I was too young to remember. My dad’s family lived in that country for the last twenty plus generations and I cannot but venture to guess that this is the reasoning behind my strong urge to return. Claude McKay’s homeland, Jamaica, called out for his homeland his entire life. McKay spent most of his life in his country yet impacted the Harlem Renaissance more than many Africa American authors of the day. McKay is still considered a key writer of his generation because he incorporated his life into his work, leading to the revelation of the internationality of the Harlem Renaissance.
Festus Claudius McKay was born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica. Sunny Ville is known only for McKay and the manner in which he described it. It played as his “symbol of a lost golden age” (pg 1457) in his works. In this small town, McKay found his calling. He studied “the British masters” (website). This was particularly difficult for Blacks at the time. They had been taught to speak and taught to learn in the conqueror’s language and knew no other way of freedom. McKay noticed quickly how ridiculous this was and “cease[d] mimicking the English poets” and began “producing verse in Jamaican dialect”(website), a radical decision for the day. McKay went to study in Europe, which began to shape his writing. He wrote his most famous work, If We Must Die, before leaving on this trip. The poem, If We Must Die, played role model for Ernest J. Gaines work, A Lesson Before Dying, several years later. Gaines’ work had nothing to do with Jamaica yet McKay’s poem had everything to do with his homeland. McKay wrote the poem after living in Kingston, where he was disgusted at the lack of resistance to the white man’s rule.
McKay moved to the United States in 1921 to try and become a more prominent voice. His radical ideas were lost on the general public but some key people took notice. While in Harlem, however, home called out for McKay once more. His autobiography was entitled A Long Way from Home, clearly referring to his island nation. He never did move back but McKay did become an American citizen in 1940, over twenty years after first arriving. McKay was able to make an international impact without leaving the United States, however. McKay’s work in Jamaica started to raise Black awareness. He started a trend of abandoning the White Man’s English and regressing back to the natural idiom of the country. McKay, after showing his island what freedom could really be like, moved on to Europe, where his ideas fell upon deaf ears. On the Eurasian continent, racism mattered less and people were treated much more fairly. McKay noticed and quickly returned to the United States, where he made enemies with such leaders as W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke (pg 1456). He made sure his voice was heard in this country and became a severely under recognized influence of the Harlem Renaissance movement.
McKay never got to go back to his homeland after moving to Harlem permanently. He moved to Chicago and died there a few years later. Yet his heart was never in the United States. My heart lies in Scotland. I hope that I am more fortunate than McKay; if I don’t get to go back, my life will be incomplete. McKay kept Jamaica in his mind and heart by writing about it, incorporating it into a little of everything. His homeland influenced him more than any of ours impacts us.

Works Cited
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=4573
The Norton Anthology of American Literature Between the Wars 1914-1945, Sixth Edition, Volume D