Chester Himes's Harlem Noirs

"One imagines Chester Himes as a species of cactus lurking along the edges of the literary landscape: arresting, prickly, and resilient, stinging harshly when pressed too hard or approached too indelicately -and yet carrying enough water beneath its tough hide to refresh, even renew the landscape around it. In a lifetime beset with neglect, struggle, and scorn, that is exactly what Himes did."

"He wrote and wrote, channeling his anger, taking risks, and leaving behind a shelf of more than 20 books, the best known of which were his detective stories set in Harlem-a place he didn't actually spend as much time in as he had in the Midwest, where he'd begun writing while serving prison time during the 1930s, or in Europe, where he'd moved in the 1950s after a series of personal and professional setbacks"

Chester Himes reshaped the detective novel into a vehicle for searing social criticism, blending noir plots with pointed portrayals of racial injustice and urban life. He produced more than twenty books, most famously a series of Harlem detective stories, despite spending significant time in the Midwest and later Europe. Early prison experiences in the 1930s launched his writing; later personal and professional setbacks prompted relocation to Europe in the 1950s. Persistent marginalization marked his career even among Black American writers during the civil-rights era. His fiction channels anger and risk-taking to expose social neglect, struggle, and scorn while offering vivid, bitterly comic portraits.

Read at The Nation