Banjo

By Claude McKay

Book Overview

Claude McKay's picaresque of 1920s Marseille, a paean to the Black diaspora

A Penguin Classic

On the shores of the Vieux Port of Marseille, Lincoln Agrippa Daily, better known as "Banjo," panhandles alongside friends and fellow migrants, busking at bars and escaping drunken scrums, in search of money, wine, camaraderie, and a good time. As Banjo and the "beach boys" drift through the dives of "the Ditch," they reflect on race, class, labor, and the challenges of living as working-class Black men in cities and countries to which they are anathema. When the itinerant writer Ray joins the group, Banjo begins to explore the existential implications of being Black in a world that moves--in its contempt, indifference, and defiance--to the "sweet jazzing of life." Published a year after Claude McKay's bestselling Home to Harlem, Banjo transports readers to the gritty, vibrant streets of 1920s Marseille and offers timeless meditations on Black transnational solidarity, friendship, music, and belonging.

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143139401
• ISBN13: 9780143139409
• Release Date: August 2027
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Length: 304 Pages

Customer Reviews

An manifesto of Black dignity, a fun book to read

The years after World War One were a time for youth with adventure on their minds to follow what the war showed them and seek the world. This book brings to my mind another book of this heady time of excitement, Dos Passos great _1919_. However, this book goes far beyond the interesting and humorous adventures of its protagonists to sketch a vision of Pan African. The characters are former sailors and dockworkers on the bum in Marseilles in the early 1920s, all Black from the United States, the West Indies, French and British Africa. Some are uneduated workers and former peasants, at least one is educated, living "the life of the people" on the beach. While careening through adventures involving very much sex, more alcohol, and encounters with whites from every level of European and American society, the book takes up the issues of race and racism, not only on the part of European and American whites, but the prejudices among and within the different Black nationalities themselves. When the book was published young Africans, young West Indians, and Black Americans, but especially Francophone Blacks like Aime Caesaire and Leopold Senghor would would craft the Black cultural and political affirmations called Negritude, would champion this book as a call for Black unity, dignity, and for looking to the warmth, joy, and passion of the culture and people of Africa and her diaspora int he Americas. The ordinary reader will enjoy this book because it is told with wit and grace and that it humor comes from the real world. After all, the protagonists live by their wits, not by their labor, and there are enough scraps with romance, hustlers, and the police to keep the plot moving. I read it because its comments on culture and race are important to my own research, but once reading it, I found myself hungry for its pages every time I put it down, wanting to get through the current adventure and into the next.

tranquility

I named this tranquility because I ordered "Banjo" by McKay I got it in a few days and it was in perfect condition. Therefore I didnt have to worry a second thankyou peppiep@centurytel.net