“I felt assurance that If We Must Die was just what I intended it to be…” — Claude McKay

“I felt assurance that If We Must Die was just what I intended it to be, a universal poem.”

Taking later wartime use of the sonnet as proof of its wider intent · Autobiography, A Long Way from Home, 1937

About Claude McKay

15 September 1890–22 May 1948

In the pantheon of American literary history, few figures embody the contradictions and complexities of the twentieth century quite like Claude McKay. Born Festus Claudius McKay on September 15, 1890, in the verdant hills of Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, this poet, novelist, and essayist would become one of the most…

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