“Superhuman Power”: Claude McKay and the Black Immigrant Voice Dylan Blau Edelstein College

Heralded as an early pioneer of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay (1889-1948) is often included in the African American literary cannon. On the surface, his poetry, with its focus on issues of racism and exclusion, appears to fit neatly into this category. Recent scholarship, however, points to a need for situating McKay in a context of transnational migration to America. [1] Born and raised in rural Jamaica, McKay did not move to the United States until his twenties. As such, his poetry does not capture an African American voice, but rather that of a West Indian immigrant adapting to American conceptions of blackness. In this essay, I apply this voice to McKay’s poems “America” (1919) and “The White House” (1922). Reading these poems from the perspective of a black immigrant navigating new geopolitical and social divisions, I analyze how each poem’s speaker must compromise his sense of self in order to stay afloat in a new land. I propose that in writing about experiences applicable to both black immigrants and African Americans, McKay lays out a road map for mutual understanding between these diasporic communities.

When read from the perspective of a black immigrant, “America” quickly takes on a tone of disillusionment...