If He Hollers Let Him Go: A Novel (Himes, Chester) by Chester Himes (2002)

I wonder if the American publishing world of the 1950s and early 1960s didn’t quite know what to do with Chester Himes. His early novels in particular were angry and pulled few punches regarding subjects like race, sex, injustice, and violence. While it was clear to anyone who read him that Himes possessed an extraordinary talent, it seems to me like everything was done that could be done to make the covers of his early American edition hardcover books look as flat as possible. On the other hand, his crime novels that had to be published in this country as paperback originals were allowed cover art as lurid and suggestive as any of the other paperback novels then being published. Different audience perhaps… In any case, don’t miss his first novel, IF HE HOLLERS LET HIM GO. It is terrific. ( )

The setting of this novel is Los Angeles during World War II. The main character, Bob Jones, is an African-American man, who gets a job at a defense shipyard there, and is the narrator of this story. Bob is, in fact, the supervisor of a small crew of other African-Americans. The action takes place just after the forced internment of Japanese-Americans in California, which kind of sets the stage for how Bob sees himself as a black man in white Los Angeles. He's also in a situation where, because most of the able-bodied men have gone off to war, there's an influx of laborers, both white and African-American, men and women. He often ruminates about his existence as a black man, realizing that even with his position as supervisor, other supervisors will not share their white workers when he needs them to do so, or that he is not wanted in white, middle-class restaurants or other establishments. In short, Bob is aware that as an African-American man at this time, he's being oppressed, and the whole symbolism (imho) of the Japanese internment reminds him constantly that it could happen to him at any time for any reason.

Bob has a girlfriend, Alice, who, since her father is a very well-paid physician, lives a very middle-class sort of life. Alice is fair-skinned and a social worker, entertaining herself with intellectual friends. When Bob tries to explain how he feels because of being African-American in Los Angeles, Alice tries to explain to him that if he'd just let all of these feelings of white oppression go, and find himself a place in the middle-class scene, life would be so much easier for him. Alice is sort of a dreamer, who doesn't want to come to terms with her heritage; she really has no clue. Bob, on the other hand, can't ignore the realities of his life, and this hits home one day on the job when a trashy white woman laborer from Texas calls him the n-word and he reacts in kind, setting off a chain of events that snowball out of control.

I liked this book, and I'll probably read many more by this author in the future. His characters were believable, the setting was entirely believable and as a reader, you get into Bob's head very quickly and you stay with him the entire time. Himes is an awesome writer. I would most definitely recommend this book to people who want a bit of grit in their reading, or to people who may have been previously on the fence about reading this author, but don't expect to come away with this upbeat 'cause it ain't gonna happen. ( )