A Study Guide (New Edition) for Claude McKay's "The Tropics in New York"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide (New Edition) for Claude McKay's "The Tropics in New York", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781535868006

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The Tropics in New York

Claude Mckay

1920

Introduction

The Tropics in New York is a poem of three stanzas by poet, essayist, novelist, and short-story writer Claude McKay, a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. The poem was first published in the Liberator in May 1920. It was reprinted in McKay's collection Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems (1920) and appeared again in his verse collection Harlem Shadows in 1922. McKay was born in Jamaica but spent much of his life from the age of twenty-two onward in the United States, especially New York City, and the poem reflects the longing of the immigrant for his native land and the old ways of life remembered from his early years. Although McKay is best known for his writings that attack racism, The Tropics in New York reflects another aspect of his work: nostalgia for an idyllic past that will not come again.

Author Biography

Festus Claudius McKay was born in the village of Sunny Ville, Jamaica, on September 15, 1889. (Some sources give his birth year as 1890.) He was the youngest child of Thomas Francis McKay and Hannah Ann McKay, who were farmers. When he was nine, his parents sent him to live with his oldest brother, who was a teacher, in the belief that this would help him gain a better education. Under his brother's tutelage, McKay began to read widely in British literature, European philosophy, and other subjects and even began writing poetry at the age of ten.

For two years beginning in 1906, McKay was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker. Afterward he worked briefly as a police constable in Kingston, Jamaica's capital city. Shocked by the racism he encountered there, he soon returned to his native village. Meanwhile continuing his interest in poetry, and with the help of an older mentor named Walter Jekyll, he published his first book