Some claim it is no longer an issue. Others want to argue that it is worse in another city, another state, another region, another country. But it is here, lurking beneath the bed and following our every move down brightly lit streets or darkened alleys. The trouble with racism and slavery is that our society has decided that their impacts can be dismissed or ignored by those who do not experience them on a daily basis. Whether we see it or not does not confirm its existence. In the face of white denial, black writers force the monster out into the open with their writing. The lens of critical race studies in studying literature allows for the opportunity to explore and understand the deeply ingrained impacts of racism, slavery, and slave trades on the diaspora of African peoples. Spillers’ “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe” looks at these ingrained issues of racism to determine its generational impacts. In Claude McKay’s “Subway Wind,” Spillers’ theories on heritage expose the splintered process of trying to heal from the historical injustices committed against black peoples through slavery.

Spillers explores the disconnect generations of African people faced when their bodies, families, and cultures were destroyed. The structure of their lives became matriarchal, centered around a lineage that was rooted in the mother’s line and not the traditional fatherly line (Spillers 65). In slavery, the white slave owners ripped apart families, leaving the absent black father. The slave owners then raped the black mothers, forcing them into producing illegitimate children who would never receive the rights and properties of their white fathers. The dual absent fathers left a longing for generations and an inherent loss of heritage and culture that could not be traced or reconciled. The horrors that generation after generation then faced continued to loop back to the absent father figure, leaving the continued longing for a past that could never be understood.

Spillers goes on to define the stolen lives and cultures that slavery exerted. “First of all, their New-World, diasporic plight marked a theft of the body--a willful and violent...severing of the captive body from its motive will, its active desire” (Spillers 67). The “theft of the body,” as she defines it, leaves the absence of choice in the face of desire. Entire families split and dispersed despite their pleas to stay together. The dispersal and eventual diaspora “interrupted hundreds of years of black African culture” and created a disjointed view of traditions and cultural heritage (Spillers 68). The lack of the father and the lack of heritage left the longing of an escape from the pressures rooted in these absent figures.

Poet Claude McKay (1889-1948) was at the same mercies of generations lost to the horrors of slavery. Born in Jamaica, McKay lived a life split between his history as the product of slavery and as a scholar fascinated by British literature. He first moved to the United States in 1912 and proceeded to travel all over the world to work with scholars and activists on literary and political movements, all the while writing about his growing understanding of racism in a world where he longed for his homeland (Poets.org, “Claude McKay”). McKay’s longings were particularly evident in his poem “Subway Wind,” which appeared in his collection of poetry, “Harlem Shadows.”

The initial irony of the poem is that the concept of longing--if associated with McKay’s own homeland--is for Jamaica, a place with a history of the slave trade. The real missing homeland cannot be determined; it is impossible to find where any exact homeland would be from the treatment and structure of the slave trade. Therefore, the only place to project the longing is on another land where slavery was horrifying and prolific. The winds bring the feeling of desire for someplace other than this. The wind is described as “weary” in the “packed cars,” likening to the voyages where slaves were in the holds of the ships that brought them across the Atlantic (McKay, lines 2-3). The crowded subway train is a metaphor for the slave trade ships and the desire for freedom, for air, for home from those being transported. The absent ability to find these, even generations later, is reflected in the faces of the descendants traveling in the subway, feeling the desire even then.

The “pale-cheeked children” are multiracial people with African lineage through slavery. They are described as pale but not white, a distinct difference that McKay structures as a signifier of their lineage (McKay, line 5). African Americans must confront the horrors their ancestors faced nearly daily, simply from the color of their skin. The brutal rapings and destruction of black women’s bodies in slavery from their white owners left a line of multiracial, bastardized children with no father to define as their own, therefore creating the distance between a homeland and the bodies they live in. From their appearance alone, it was clear that they did not belong by their paler skin. Spillers’ points about the absent fathers left the confrontation of this history even more difficult as it brings up the generational burden of slavery, even hundreds of years later. Describing them as “children” also suggests that they may not be actual children but children in the sense that they are the future generations of slaves, the offspring that shoulders the weight of injustices and cruelty they so desperately want to escape.

From their perspective in the subway train--a metaphorical slave ship hold--the children of slavery begin dreaming and longing for the home they believe can bring healing. However, even in the face of this desire and hope, they are still held prisoner by the society that was built on the backs of their ancestors. The ambiguity of “captive wind” follows this suggestion that they are trapped and not in freedom (McKay, line 8). The wind may be literally captive as it whistles through the enclosed subway tunnels, but it also may be holding someone or something captive. The whistling and weary wind may symbolize the desires of the children to escape to their heritage and find peace, but the tunnel represents the pressures from society that prevent this freedom and escape to the sea and the fields. Being ripped from their homelands, the absent father, the lost lineage--all of these factors are the pressures that create the tunnel that prevents their healing.

Describing the boats as “native schooners” forces recognition of the historical fact that there was once a native people to these islands and native people in Africa (McKay, line 9). While it may be impossible to find a full historical and cultural reconciliation between the past and the present, identifying the fact that there were people with cultures in the islands first is key to understanding a need for reconciliation at all. Their waters are “sleepy,” suggesting peaceful times before slavery (McKay, line 10). The longing for the peaceful waters with their cultural schooners is due to the interrupted generations of culture Spillers explores. Her points on how slavery created the chasm between the past and present are showcased in the desire for a time when their culture was not only present but also had the potential to thrive for many generations.

The description of the land and its features fits with Jamaica and other tropical Caribbean islands, once again opening the argument that McKay is himself writing the poem as a love poem to his home of the present and his home of the past before slavery engulfed the island (McKay, lines 11-14). The dual interpretation of the description “field lie idle in the dew drenched night” could mean before slavery or during slavery on the island (McKay, line 15). Slaves would not be working at night, leaving the fields open and quiet and giving a moment of peace. This interpretation suggests that there is no way to sever the past and present from the history of slavery on the island. It would mean the only form of peace that was possible was when they were not working, not in the form of full escape. The second interpretation is the longing for a time when the island was without slavery hundreds of years ago, when the fields would be untouched and free. It gives hope that there is some way to return to the heritage and culture that is so desperately desired.

In the final line of the poem, the concept of “Trades” is associated with the descriptions of “fresh and free” (McKay, line 16). Capitalizing “Trades” can also give a double meaning. The initial meaning would be the trade routes used to transport and deliver slaves to the United States, England, the Caribbean, and other parts of Europe and South America. The dream of the trade routes being “fresh and free” suggests again the possibility of a history washed clean from slavery, one where the longings of diasporic generations are no longer existent. In contrast, “Trades” could also be descriptive of the trade winds that run their course through the Caribbean and were used by the slave trade in their transports. This interpretation suggests that the winds and the routes are separate entities, meaning there may not be a way to find a perfected history without slavery, but there may be a way to find a form of healing in the present.

“Subway Wind” showcases the complexities of generations trying to understand their heritage in a culture and society that displaced any potential for their healing. McKay’s writing explores several avenues and possibilities, including those that imagine the perfect world before slavery and the reality of the present. His multiplicity of the wind as a salve for the soul, as an escape to the past, as an answer to questions, as an embodiment of longing--all its characteristics are held within the subway tunnel. The wind cannot be separated from its environment, from the modern-day developments and technologies that have led to this moment in history, just as the impacts of racism and slavery cannot separate from society. The wind may embody the desire for freedom, yet it is another example of the impossibility of finding this freedom in cultural heritage.

Works Cited

“Claude McKay.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poet/claude-mckay.

McKay, Claude. “Subway Winds.” Harlem Shadows, New York : Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922, www.harlemshadows.org/subway-wind.html.

Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacratics, vol. 17, no. 2, 1987, pp. 64–81., doi:10.2307/464747.

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