Claude McKay's Lost Novel
Review of Amiable with Big Teeth; Against the Current vol. 192
McTaggart, Ted
http://solidarity-us.org/atc/192/p5189/
Date Written: 2018-01-28
Publisher: Against the Current
Year Published: 2018
Resource Type: Article
Cx Number: CX23266
Review of Amiable with Big Teeth, a novel by the African-American revolutionary activist and writer Claude McKay.
Abstract:
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Excerpt:
Organizational questions of Harlem's Ethiopia solidarity movement play a central role in McKay's telling, making the novel's early chapters in particular somewhat difficult to follow. It opens with a rally by the fictionalized "Hands to Ethiopia" committee to welcome Lij Tekla Alamaya, an envoy from Ethiopia, ostensibly sent as a representative of the exiled emperor Haile Selasse.
Following the demonstration, an organizing meeting for the committee is used to introduce the key characters and expound upon the conflicts that lead to the movement's subsequent split. Against Communist Party member Newton Castle’s charges of "black chauvinism," committee chairman Pablo Peixota defends the mass sentiment that had led the "Hands to Ethiopia" to oppose inclusion of whites.
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