This Is Not A Test: Andrew-Luke Here
Having read Banjo and A Long Way From Home, the questions that I am about to raise have to deal with identity. The identity of McKay as he saw himself in relation to the world, the identity as to how others viewed McKay, and thirdly how McKay's characters would view McKay.
1. In his autobiography, McKay on page 67 of the second course packet describes that he "won over most of the Negro intelligentsia in Paris, excepting the leading journalist..." From what I gather I believe that he is talking about Dr. Alain Locke and if it is Dr. Locke, why does McKay clearly not like him and respect him as a writer, and as a man?
2. McKay on page 66 in the same course packet is speaking with one of the Harlem Negroid Elite when she states: " The people in Home to Harlem are our low-down Negroes and we respectable Negroes ought to be proud that we are not like them and be grateful to you for giving us a real picture of Negroes whose lives we know little about on the inside." McKay's response, " I felt completely vindicated." (66).
A:
Why does McKay feel at all "vindicated" as this female elite stated McKay was just doing what Whites did all the time when writing about Negroes. Do you feel McKay truly believed that he actually felt vindicated.
B:
How would Banjo react what would he say and what would he do to McKay for making this statement if he had the opportunity to?
3. On pages 60-61 in the course packet, Le Corse and McKay's interactions come across as downright troubling. The issue of commidification once again manifests itself, and also the interaction between the Occidental (Le Corse) vs. the Oriental.
A.
Where does McKay fit into the aforementioned category his struggle indicates that of the Orient, but his social circle would indicate the former.
B.
Le Corse states: "I don't like degenerates. Of course, if rich people want to indulge a fantasy, I arrange privately for them, for rich people can afford to be fantastic. But I have no use for plain poor people being fantastic unless they are making money by it."
What then is Le Corse's interest in McKay other than on the strength of his friend vouching for McKay? Why is McKay different from a Senegalese because he is American, why does Le Corse refer to Senegalese as "savages and stupid" (60).
C.
Is Le Corse trying to convince McKay that he is nothing like the Senegalese and that he himself is not like the Spaniards and Portuguese? Or is it because like McKay discovered when seeing Ivan Opfer's accurate non-romantic-non-sycophantic artistic depiction of reality as he saw it and what Le Corse new himself to be?
Does Le Corse realize that he can protect his Wife and Children from the family business in running Mancebias (brothels, bawdy houses) but ultimately he cannot protect himself from who he truly is and his fear of himself?
In response to your second question Sean, I feel that McKay wants to be able to tell the truth. And in telling the truth, he is able to see how ignorant some of his people were. We can look at his autobiography, "I was well aware that if I returned to Harlem I wouldn't be going back to the milieu of railroad men, from whom I had drifted far out of touch... I knew that if I did return I would have to find a new orientation among the Negro intelligentsia", McKay is aware that he has changed, grown because of the people he had surrounded himself in France. It is his growth to understand the "black man" entirely: the destituted and the intelligent black people as well. He needed to understand trials and accomplishments within the Negro movement, which I believe is why James Weldon Johnson invited him to America.
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