Customer Reviews

If He Hollers Let Him Go: A Novel

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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.

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.

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.

This book, along with others that for some reason fall into obscurity after a dazzling popularity, really should not be allowed to be forgotten. Himes writing is crisp, clean. His characters are interesting and compelling. We want to see what happens, even when we don't like it. When people ask me what books they ought to read to become well-read, this one is on the list, both for it's literary merit and for the good story it tells.

Out of curiosity, I chose to read some of Himes' work to get a feel for what has been written about him. While this book contains some valuable insight into the racial climate on the West coast during the war, some readers may find the writing stiff and overworked. Luckily, the book is short (less than 300 pages) so you can just go through it.

Himes writes in the style of Charles Bukowsky, but in 1946, telling the story of a black man living in South Central LA and working in the WWII shipyard industry, confronting racist bosses and a white southern borderline-personality seductress/accuser. I had to put this book down a couple times because I was emotionally drained: the rage is sustained and precariously balanced. Walter Mosley must have read this one for background for his Easy Rawlins mysteries, but Himes is far from easy. Himes does not deserve his obscurity