Banana-Ripe

HOME TO HARLEM--Claude McKay--Harpers ($2.50). Jake, a Negro, home from the World War, picks up a warm brown girl in a Harlem cabaret, gives her his last $50, spends the night with her. Next morning, after leaving her, he discovers in his pocket the $50 with a scrawl attached: "Just a little gift from a baby girl to a honey boy." But Jake had lost her address. So he finds new women, old drinks; becomes a longshoreman, a third cook on a Pullman, a quiet enjoyer of metropolitan fleshpots. In the end--Negroes, too, like it happy--Jake wanders into the arms of that same warm brown girl.

A simple plot; but within it are the jungle blues, the swaying bodies, the early-morning smells of Harlem--tied together by an urban Negro's unmistakable contempt for all things white. Many Caucasians will call it a lewd, crude book. It is certainly lacking in inhibitions. That is why it is more convincing, and hence a more significant work, than Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven. "Liquor-rich laughter, banana-ripe laughter," says Jake. That, plus sad rolling eyes, is Harlem.

Author Claude McKay is a Negro. Born in Jamaica of parents who had been abducted from Madagascar, he was sent to the U. S. by a friend to be educated. After two years in college, he washed pots and pans in Harlem, worked on Pullmans and steamers. He wrote most of Home to Harlem while working on docks at London and Marseilles.