Banjo
"The Africans gave him a positive feeling of wholesome contact with racial roots. They made him feel that he was not merely an unfortunate accident of birth, but that he belonged definitely to a race weighed, tested, and poised in the universal scheme. They inspired him with confidence in them... Even though they stood bewildered before the imposing bigness of white things, apparently unaware of the invaluable worth of their own, they were naturally defended by the richness of their fundamental racial values."
FIRST EDITION of Banjo, by Claude McKay, "the first and most militant voice of the Harlem Renaissance" (Britannica). Banjo, McKay's second novel, explores the vibrant lives of a group of jazz musicians trying to survive in the dark corners of 1920's Marseilles.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1929. Octavo, original half cloth over brightly-decorated boards, original dust jacket. Dust jacket with minute chipping to spine ends and just a touch of fading to spine. A beautiful, fine copy.
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