Home to Harlem

Within this book, I quickly noticed quite an emphasis on skin and color. It shows great diversity within the Harlem community, even a sort of hierarchy. I was also interested in how Claude McKay drew many comparisons between the people and animals, especially in the dance places. At one point, McKay described them as wriggling maggots, a pretty evocative image. Once he wrote on how the white people sort of infiltrated the Baltimore, bored of their neighborhoods and looking for something exciting. Though not directly related, it made me think of this scene from the Rum Diary. Here, you see a melding of two race worlds but one that doesn't stick for too long. The Baltimore ends up shut down and in the movie (and book, I suppose), the businessmen are still at odds with the native Puerto Ricans.