Of Vanity, Fake News, and Flair: Naturalism's International Entrance into Harlem in Claude McKay's Amiable with Big Teeth

Abstract

THE RECENT PUBLICATION OF TWO OF CLAUDE MCKAY ’S NOVELS FROM the s, Amiable with Big Teeth () and Romance in Marseilles (), represents significant developments in the relationship between African American literature and American literary naturalism. Although scholars have previously acknowledged Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson, and Ann Petry as important African American contributors to naturalist traditions, these authors still receive far less attention than “canonical” naturalist writers such as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser. Presently, and at least partially because of literary naturalism’s decades-long focus on “white-authored writings and social Darwinist discourse” (Kilgallen , ), one that has cumulatively “relegated [African American authors] to the proverbial margins” (Long , ), the foremost African American contributors are