Claude McKay's 'Home to Harlem' Becomes First Black Novel on Bestseller List

Claude McKay's novel 'Home to Harlem' (1928) became the first novel by a Black American author to reach the national bestseller list. The novel's frank portrayal of working-class Black Harlem—its jazz clubs, sexuality, and street life—established the legitimacy of gritty realism in Black fiction alongside the more genteel Harlem Renaissance tradition.