The Full Text of “The Tropics in New York”
1Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,
2Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
3And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
4Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,
5Set in the window, bringing memories
6Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
7And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies
8In benediction over nun-like hills.
9My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze;
10A wave of longing through my body swept,
11And, hungry for the old, familiar ways,
12I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.
The Full Text of “The Tropics in New York”
1Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,
2Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
3And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
4Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,
5Set in the window, bringing memories
6Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
7And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies
8In benediction over nun-like hills.
9My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze;
10A wave of longing through my body swept,
11And, hungry for the old, familiar ways,
12I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.
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“The Tropics in New York” Introduction
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"The Tropics in New York" is a poem by Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay, an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance, originally published in 1920 in the socialist magazine The Liberatore. In the poem, the speaker comes across a pile of tropical fruits displayed in a store window that reminds them of their native country and prompts an overwhelming feeling of homesickness. The poem treats this homesickness as a metaphorical "hunger," suggesting that the longing for home is as fundamental as the need for food.
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“The Tropics in New York” Summary
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Bananas (both ripe and unripe), fresh ginger, cocoa beans still in their husk, avocados, tangerines, mangoes, and grapefruit—all perfect enough to deserve a gold medal at a county fair.
Displayed in the window, these treats reminded me of my homeland, where bounteous fruit trees stood by little melodious creeks, and the sunrises sparkled with dew, and magical blue skies seemed to bless the hills—hills that reminded me of patient, holy nuns.
My eyes lost their light, and I couldn't look anymore; homesickness flooded my body and, feeling as if I were starving for my well-known, beloved homeland, I stepped away, lowered my head, and cried.
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“The Tropics in New York” Themes
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The Power of Homesickness
The speaker in “The Tropics in New York” expresses an intense homesickness. Seeing tropical fruit piled in a store window in New York, the speaker is overcome by memories of their own tropical home—and a longing for its beauty and familiarity. The poem suggests that homesickness can be a force as urgent and fundamental as hunger.
The sight of a pile of tropical fruits in a New York store window stops the speaker short: every one of these fruits reminds the speaker of their faraway home. The speaker seems thrilled by this grocery window’s bounty, rejoicing in the sight of “Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root, / Cocoa in pods and alligator pears." Judging by the speaker's tone, it seems that such a sighting is unusual—in the streets of New York, they aren’t used to seeing cocoa still in its pod rather than already processed, or “alligator pears” (a.k.a. avocados).
The sight of all these tropical goods evokes not just the speaker’s desire for the taste of familiar fruits, but their longing for home. Gazing at the produce, the speaker nostalgically remembers the very “fruit-trees” those treats grew on—and then the “dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies” of their home country. These memories of home are bittersweet for the speaker, who is now far away from the place where they grew up. The sight of the fruit overcomes the speaker with “a wave of longing” to return to this time and place in their life, a longing that makes the speaker “turn[] aside” and weep.
The speaker’s homesickness feels a lot like a metaphorical appetite—not just for the taste of familiar fruits, but for a whole beloved landscape. The fruit in the window inspires the speaker’s urgent “hunger” for “the old, familiar ways”: they’re practically starving for the “nun-like hills” of their home. The desire for home, to this speaker, is thus a force as fundamental as the need to eat. Homesickness, the poem suggests, can feel as debilitating as starvation.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Tropics in New York”
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Lines 1-4
Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,The poem begins with the speaker listing off the names of tropical fruits: "Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root," etc. The speaker doesn't offer any narrative context, such as "I was out walking and looked into a store window and saw piles of tropical fruit..." Instead, the reader is instantly immersed in the speaker's excitement over "Cocoa" that isn't processed but rather still in its "pod[]," "alligator pears" (avocados), and "tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit." The lush visual imagery suggests that the speaker simply doesn't know where to direct their gaze—there's so much to see!
These tropical goods, the speaker continues, are "Fit," or good enough, to win first prize "at parish fairs." This is an allusion to the poet's native Jamaica, which is broken up into units called parishes (much like the U.S. is divided into states).
But the poem doesn't take place in Jamaica; as the title tells readers, it's set in New York. And the polysyndeton of these lines evokes the speaker's wide-eyed wonder at seeing all these fruits from their homeland in such a distant city, as though "the tropics" have been transplanted thousands of miles away: the use of coordinating conjunctions—"And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit"—might make readers think of the way the speaker's eyes are darting from one thing to the next, trying to take it all in at once.
Adding to the poem's pleasing, musical rhythm are alliteration ("pods" and "pears," "fruit, / Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs"), consonance ("Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root," "And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit"), and assonance ("highest prize"). The intensity of all these overlapping sonic devices evokes the heightened emotional state of the speaker, although the reader won't discover the significance of the speaker's encountering "The Tropics in New York" until after the stanza break.
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Lines 5-6
Set in the window, bringing memories
Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills, -
Lines 7-8
And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies
In benediction over nun-like hills. -
Lines 9-10
My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze;
A wave of longing through my body swept, -
Lines 11-12
And, hungry for the old, familiar ways,
I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.
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“The Tropics in New York” Symbols
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The Window
The poem uses a grocery store window to symbolize the speaker's separation from their homeland.
In the first stanza, the speaker describes an abundance of lush, tropical fruit: "bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root," "Cocoa in pods and alligator pears," "tangerines and mangoes and grapefruit." It seems there is no distance at all between the speaker and all this fruit—that is, until the stanza break.
The second stanza begins with the speaker saying that all this fruit is "Set in the window." In other words, rather than being among the tropical fruits, touching and smelling and tasting them, the speaker is looking at them through a window and being reminded of home. The window separates the speaker from the fruits just as distance and time separates the speaker from their homeland.
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“The Tropics in New York” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration heightens the language of the poem, adding intensity and music. Take a look at lines 2-4, for instance, with their many /p/ and /f/ sounds:
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,All this alliteration creates a sense of abundance. It also builds a vibrant, bouncy rhythm that evokes the speaker's rush of emotion upon seeing all this fruit.
There's some striking alliteration in lines 6-7 as well:
Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skiesThe liquid /l/ sounds in "laden" and "low" evoke the musical "singing" of the "rills" (or streams). Note, too, that this /l/ alliteration is echoed by /l/ consonance later in the stanza ("mystical blue," "nun-like hills"), adding to the gentle texture of the poem as the speaker is drawn into memories of their homeland. In line 7, meanwhile, the staccato /d/ sounds of "dewy dawns" draw readers' attention to the words and make them feel more potent. This potency, in turn, suggests the speaker's emotional attachment to the memories they are describing.
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Consonance
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Assonance
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Imagery
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Enjambment
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Polysyndeton
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"The Tropics in New York" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Alligator pears
- Parish
- Rills
- Benediction
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Another name for avocados.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Tropics in New York”
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Form
The poem is made up of three quatrains, or four-line stanzas. The three stanzas follow the speaker's trajectory of:
- Seeing tropical fruits in a shop window;
- Being reminded of home;
- And feeling a "wave" of homesickness as the speaker realizes how far away they are from this place that they love and cherish.
The poem is short and succinct, yet powerfully emotive. The brevity of the poem, then, is perhaps suggestive of the ease and quickness with which a sudden and unexpected homesickness can overwhelm someone.
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Meter
The poem is written in iambic pentameter—that is, lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's line 12 as an example:
I turned | aside | and bowed | my head | and wept.
However, like a lot of iambic verse, this poem sometimes plays with its meter. Take a look at the variation in line 2, for instance:
Cocoa | in pods | and al- | ligat- | or pears,
This line begins with a spondee, a foot with two stressed beats in a row. This bouncy beginning makes this line feel as lively and enticing as the fruits it describes.
Iambic pentameter is a familiar, classic form, common in English-language poetry. Using it here, the speaker might be emphasizing the fact that they're not writing in a form associated with their native country, but with their English-speaking adoptive country. That's a fitting choice for a poem about feeling far from home!
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem follows a strict ABAB rhyme scheme in each stanza. In other words, the first and third lines of each stanza rhyme with each other, as do the second and fourth.
For the most part, these rhymes are exact: "root" and "fruit," "pears" and "fairs," etc. These perfect rhymes give the poem its pleasing and memorable musicality.
However, there is one slant rhyme: between "memories" and "skies" in lines 5 and 7. This less-than-perfect rhyme suggests the rosy, idyllic, not-quite-real nature of memory. Just as the speaker can't touch the fruits in the window because they are behind glass, the speaker can't reach out and feel their homeland; they can only remember it. And though the memories are glowing and beautiful, they aren't real. The slant rhyme, then, subtly emphasizes the speaker's pain as they are unable to again walk through the picturesque landscape of their home.
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“The Tropics in New York” Speaker
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The speaker of this poem is someone who is, first and foremost, not from New York. The poem doesn't explicitly state where they are from, other than that their homeland is a tropical one. This is why, when the speaker encounters a store window filled with tropical fruits, the speaker is transported to another time and place—a happy one, it seems, characterized by trees heavy with fruit and "mystical blue skies" above "nun-like hills." This sudden, intense remembrance of their homeland fills the speaker with grief; they long for "the old, familiar ways" now far from them.
While the poem doesn't need to be read autobiographically to be effective (anyone who's ever experienced homesickness of any kind will likely resonate with the speaker's bittersweet memories of home), the poem undoubtedly corresponds to McKay's own experience as an immigrant. Born in Jamaica, McKay moved to the United States when he was 23 years old. This poem was published eight years later.
While it can certainly be applied to homesickness of any sort, the poem takes on added meaning when one considers what it would have been like for someone like McKay (or countless other immigrants), living in a land so fundamentally different from his own.
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“The Tropics in New York” Setting
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The setting of this poem is a shop window in New York filled with all sorts of tropical fruits. The sight of these goods "bring[s] memories" of home to the speaker, who readers can assume grew up in a tropical location and is overcome by emotion to see signs of "the tropics in New York."
The poem's setting then temporarily shifts, within the speaker's mind, to this homeland filled with "fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills" (that is, trees lush with fruit near little trickling, musical brooks) and "dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies."
Finally, the speaker is soon brought back to the present as a "wave of longing" flows through their body. The setting returns to the New York street where the speaker is presently standing, moved to tears by these memories.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Tropics in New York”
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Literary Context
“The Tropics in New York” appeared in Claude McKay’s 1922 collection Harlem Shadows. Now understood to be one of the most important publications of the Harlem Renaissance (a cultural and artistic movement that began in Harlem, New York in the 1920s), Harlem Shadows dealt explicitly with issues of racial inequality in America. Soon many other Black writers and poets, such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes, began publishing work that sought not only to illuminate the difficulty of Black life in a racist society, but also to celebrate Black culture and heritage.
In fact, though much of McKay’s work confronted racism directly, he also wrote extensively of his love for his native Jamaica. Born into a family of peasant farmers, McKay found beauty and significance in the simple rhythms of country life, and his love for the natural landscapes of Jamaica infuses the imagery and emotion of this poem.
McKay also grew up studying canonical British writers—John Milton, Alexander Pope, and the Romantics—taught to him by his older brother, who was a teacher, and by a neighbor, Walter Jeckyll. It was the latter, an English writer and translator, who encouraged McKay to write his early poems in his own Jamaican Patois dialect. Jeckyll also helped McKay publish his first collection, Songs of Jamaica.
Like many other writers of the Harlem Renaissance, McKay was also inspired by the writings of sociologist, historian, and activist W.E.B. Du Bois, who advocated for Pan-Africanism, a movement that nurtures solidarity between people of African descent regardless of where they are in the world. Thus, though McKay was from Jamaica, he began to understand his own struggle as being part of the struggle of Black people everywhere, an understanding which informed his work as a writer and socialist activist.
Historical Context
Claude McKay was born in Jamaica and first moved to the United States in 1912. McKay’s hometown, Sunny Ville, was made up of a mostly Black population, and when he moved away—first to Kingston, Jamaica, later to South Carolina and then Alabama to attend college—he was outraged at the overt racism he encountered. These experiences fueled him to write about his experience as a Black person (and more specifically a Black immigrant) in the U.S. McKay eventually moved to New York City, where he helped usher in the explosion of Black arts and culture known as the Harlem Renaissance that spanned the 1920s and '30s.
During this time period, which followed the end of World War I, the United States had experienced substantial economic growth. This resulted in the so-called “Roaring '20s”—a decade characterized by an increase in opportunity and financial security for many Americans.
Black Americans, however, were overwhelmingly excluded from this shift in fortune. Segregation and disenfranchisement meant that Black Americans didn’t have the same rights and privileges guaranteed to white people, and this affected their ability to get higher-paying jobs, send their children to well-funded schools, or buy homes in neighborhoods not already decimated by poverty.
While the poem doesn’t confront any of this explicitly, the reality is that a Black person in 1920s New York would perhaps not have been able to afford the imported, “exotic” fruits that were, ironically, native to McKay’s own homeland of Jamaica. This gives the poem added resonance, as the speaker “turn[s] aside and we[eps]” not just because they are reminded of home, but because they are reminded of the double standard of living in a racist society.
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More “The Tropics in New York” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to Ziggy Marley performing the poem.
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A Biography of the Poet — Learn more about Claude McKay at the Poetry Foundation.
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The Harlem Renaissance — Learn more about the literary and historical moment McKay was part of.
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An Essay on the Poem's Langauge — Read Michael North's essay about race and linguistics in "The Tropics in New York."
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The Poet Reading His Own Work — Listen to a recording of McKay reading several of his poems—including this one.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Claude McKay
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