Banana Bottom by Claude Mckay

Banana Bottom by Claude Mckay

"There is an abundant humor to this book and pathos; there is melodrama and the quiet charm of introspective analysis, and above all there is entertainment."--Saturday Review

A novel of love and war, from the author of Home to Harlem

Bita Plant is adopted and sent to England from Jamaica by white missionary benefactors and returns to her home village of Banana Bottom seven years later a beautiful, cultured young lady. Despite the evangelical guidance of her foster parents and friendship with a white squire, Bita is increasingly drawn to the vitality of her more natural culture with its festivals, superstitions, revival meetings, and passionate courtships. Among her many suitors she chooses to marry the quiet, humble man who allows her to be most true to herself. 

Claude McKay (1889-1948) was a Jamaican poet and novelist. Born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica, McKay was raised in a strict Baptist family alongside seven siblings. Sent to live with his brother Theo, a journalist, at the age of nine, McKay excelled in school while reading poetry in his free time. In 1912, he published his debut collection Songs of Jamaica, the first poems written in Jamaican Patois to appear in print. That same year, he moved to the United States to attend the Tuskegee Institute, though he eventually transferred to Kansas State University. Upon his arrival in the South, he was shocked by the racism and segregation experienced by Black Americans, which--combined with his reading of W. E. B. Du Bois' work--inspired him to write political poems and to explore the principles of socialism. He moved to New York in 1914 without completing his degree, turning his efforts to publishing poems in The Seven Arts and later The Liberator, where he would serve as co-executive editor from 1919 to 1922. Over the next decade, he would devote himself to communism and black radicalism, joining the Industrial Workers of the World, opposing the efforts of Marcus Garvey and the NAACP, and travelling to Britain and Russia to meet with communists and write articles for various leftist publications. McKay, a bisexual man, was also a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, penning Harlem Shadows (1922), a successful collection of poems, and Home to Harlem (1928), an award-winning novel exploring Harlem's legendary nightlife.