In essence, Banjo is a continuation of Home to Harlem: The location has been shifted from the United States to France, but the dramatis personae are remarkably similar, and their exploits differ only insofar as Harlem and Marseilles differ. Naturally, the problem then became what to do with a third novel. The answer was to shift from the urban world of men to the rural world of men and women, families and children, teachers and preachers in Jamaica, and remarkably, Banana Bottom (1933), with its balance of sense and sensuality, showed that McKay could combine emotional and social realism, propaganda and polemics, characterization and plot. It seems that he recognized the limitations of Banjo and that it did not enhance his growing reputation as poet and fiction writer.

One of the most frequently cited weaknesses in Banjo is the tendency for Ray’s comments to overwhelm the story and change the balance from fiction to propagandist tract, and when Goosey adds his philosophical—and at times sophomoric—musings, the novel is endangered. Yet the inclusion of discussion on major matters of the day (such as race, capitalism, socialism, and xenophobia) should not be condemned per se: The unemployed and discriminated against are often voluble critics of social policy and not infrequently have some well-informed, first-class exponents of their causes as spokesmen.

While advocating the cause of the black masses, McKay leaves the reader confused at times about his social policy. Latnah, the quintessential black mother-figure, is deserted by Banjo for Chère Blanche, the “pink sow”; and after loving and nursing, feeding and housing him, she is unceremoniously left in the Ditch while he and Ray head off on their continuing odyssey. In his fiction, as in his personal life, McKay was unable (until Banana Bottom) to develop a lasting black married relationship. Ironically, it is Latnah who criticizes Banjo for his lack of race pride—the one thing that he thought that he exemplified.

In his unpublished “Romance in Marseilles” and “Harlem Glory” (both written some time after 1935, when he was already in declining health, fortune, and reputation as a Harlem Renaissance writer), McKay tried to recapture the spirit of the two cities and their black communities, but he was too far from his sources in time and geography, and the novellas lack the qualities of the earlier works. One short story, “Dinner at Douarnenez,” which was first published in 1985, conveys McKay’s deep attachment to France and his belief that blacks have generally been more welcome there than in other countries. Most of the social and political topics that Ray addresses are the subjects of articles in The Liberator and Amsterdam News, for which McKay worked as a journalist; many of them were treated also in The Negroes in America (1979), which McKay wrote when he visited the Soviet Union in 1922-1923 but which remained unpublished until its discovery decades later among some materials in the New York Public Library.