Chester Himes Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Wendy W. Walters

SOURCE: "Limited Options: Strategic Maneuverings in Himes's Harlem," African American Review, Vol. 28, No. 4, Winter, 1994, pp. 615-31.

In the following essay, Walters traces Himes's representation of "the absurdity of U.S. race relations" in his fiction.

Chester Himes, an American author who in his lifetime never found a "place" in the American literary scene, set his novels written during French expatriation in the nostalgic milieu of a Harlem he half-created in his imagination. In fiction he was able to exercise a control over U.S. racial politics which he (like most people) could never exercise in life. Himes explained the pleasure of his nostalgic literary act to John A. Williams:

I was very happy writing these detective stories, especially the first one, when I began it. I wrote those stories with more pleasure than I wrote any of the other stories. And then when I got to the end...
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