Banjo

by Claude McKay

Book Overview

From the author of Home to Harlem, a novel about dreams, diaspora, and drifting back home

Lincoln Agrippa Daily, known to his drifter cohorts on the 1920s Marseilles waterfront as "Banjo," passes his days panhandeling and dreaming of starting his own little band. At night, Banjo, Malty, Ginger, Dengel, Bugsy, Taloufa, Goosey, and even Jake of Home to Harlem prowl the rough waterfront bistros, drinking, looking for women,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156106752
• ISBN13: 9780156106757
• Release Date: August 2023
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.2" x 7.9"

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