Transatlantic Collaborations: Visual Culture in African American Literature

Transnational Aesthetics in “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro”

“…Here, the contrast of the "new," as in the new experiences of New York, with the "old" of the "old, familiar ways" of the tropics makes a contrast which highlights the way that a globalizing world has both benefits and distinct disadvantages. 39 Fauset, argues Sherrard-Johnson, as someone who is not in her native land, often sees with "imperial eyes," but "her status as an African American woman adds another layer of complexity to transculturation, or the reciprocal but uneasy process of exchange that happens at the moment of encounter." 40 For McKay, who is also not in his own land, who is in fact in the land of the oppressor, but in the neighborhood of another oppressed group, a similarly complex layer of transculturation emerges: an additional "third space" of resistance develops between the Black capitalist and the Jamaican immigrant.…”