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Title: If He Hollers Let Him Go: A Novel by Chester B. Himes, Hilton ALS ISBN: 1-56025-445-9 Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Fight Against Racism Is A Long Hard Battle
Comment: It's 1942 and the country is pulling together in a bid to aid the war effort. Bob Jones is a well-educated black man who has left university to work as a leaderman in a shipbuilding factory. He has a steady girlfriend who comes from an upper middleclass family, a brand new car and good prospects. But he is fighting a daily rage that is being stoked by the constant racism and segregation that was common for the day.
When Bob is demoted after a run-in with a white woman at work he is barely able to control his emotions, imagining all sorts of reprisals. The shame and humiliation mixed with outrage are strong but they are tempered with the fear of consequences should he try to do anything about it.
Chester Himes' first novel is an extremely compelling tale of injustice as Bob's world inevitably falls apart. The helplessness is vividly portrayed as Bob's dreams are continually beaten down for no other reason than the colour of his skin and the urge to fight back is so strong it's palpable.
Rating: 5
Summary: A POWERFUL TALE
Comment: The rage is justified and the story needed to be told. Like a volcano, Himes had to let it out or go nuts. He was as good as Hemingway (or any of those white cats at the time) and simply was not given the respect because of his skin color.
It's a damn shame. And I'm saying this as a white guy who happens to be color-blind, as they say. Himes did end up moving to Europe where he was better treated.
Lastly, all I can say is once I started reading If He Hollers...
I could not put it down and finished it in two days--my eyes aching and all. If you're looking for the real thing, this is it.
Tough writing is not easy to find these days, writing that's from the gut and is about something... This book has it. Long live Chester Himes.
Rating: 4
Summary: Indignities and rage of a black shipyard worker during WWII
Comment: Chester Himes's first novel is a vivid portrait of black rage in Los Angeles during World War II, when blacks were able to get shipyard jobs, but had to work with (or for) southern whites who expected deference from those they considered their inferiors (indeed, regarded as subhuman). Himes crammed a lot into 203 pages. I find Bob Jones's dreams and his dialogue with Alice not just didactic, but forced, and the sexual politics is at some points difficult to believe. In contrast, the fury and terror of indignities at work, with the LAPD, with duplicitous white coworkers, union and company officials burn true. In the four days after snapping back at a Texan woman who spits out the n-word, Bob loses his position (and therefore his draft deferment), his middle-class girlfriend, his car, the money in his wallet, his shoes, and his freedom.
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Title: The Street by Ann Petry ISBN: 0395901499 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 15 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II by Marilynn S. Johnson ISBN: 0520207017 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: December, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin ISBN: 0440330076 Publisher: Laure Leaf Pub. Date: 10 November, 1985 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: American Hunger by Richard Wright ISBN: 0060909919 Publisher: HarperCollins (paper) Pub. Date: December, 1985 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California by James N. Gregory ISBN: 0195071360 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 1991 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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