Chester Himes - A Rage in Harlem

Chester Himes was a repeated victim of the institutional racism of the United States. As a young boy his brother was injured in an accident, and failed to receive treatment because he was black. When Himes went to college he was expelled for a minor prank - a white student would likely have had a telling off - and eventually ended up eventually in prison for armed robbery. While in prison he began to write stories and then, on parole, he gets a job as a screenwriter, only to lose it because he is black at the behest of the the studio head (Jack Warner). Himes ended up in France where, like a number of other black expats, his career took off and he began to get real recognition.

Today Himes is best remembered for a series of detective novels set in Harlem in the 1950s featuring the black detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. A Rage in Harlem is the first of these and it is run through with a rage at the condition of poor black working people in Harlem. This is a community of solidarity - were people don't rat on those running from the cops - but it is also a community where people swindle and steal to stay ahead - or to try and get free. Jackson the lead in this novel is swindled out of a everything he owns and the novel follows his naive attempt to fix things and get his lover, Imabelle, back. Jackson's brother dresses as Sister Gabriel and cons people into buying tickets for heaven, while looking for their own, big break.

Jackson finds himself deep in a violent mess, not quite knowing who to trust and egged on by Sister Gabriel who is hoping to con the conners in turn. 1950s Harlem, with its drugs, drink and poverty stricken housing is a brilliantly drawn, backdrop to a fast paced story of bent cops, violence and, in Jackson's case, sheer bloody naivety in the face of overwhelming evidence that Imabelle is not who he thinks she is. This is a highly recommended novel that drips authenticity, born out of the reality of Jim Crow America.

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