American Literature / Unit 13 AML 1212 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Claude McKay and "America"
Captions available
The idea
Born in Jamaica in eighteen eighty-nine to farming parents, McKay published Songs of Jamaica before coming to New York. His sonnet "America" says the country feeds him bread of bitterness and steals his breath, and then that he loves this cultured hell that tests his youth.
In practice
A hell he confesses to loving.
Where people slip
The poem's love and its accusation are one sentence.
Your place on the trail
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