Tag / Chester Himes

by Alex Pavey

The Discernment of the Reluctant Detective: Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go

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Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945) – detail from UK first edition cover

I’ve been working in earnest on Chester Himes’s 1945 novel If He Hollers Let Him Go over the last few weeks. His first published novel, If He Hollers… is set in WWII Los Angeles, and it focuses on Bob Jones, a black shipyard worker at the fictional Atlas Shipping. We follow Bob over several days as he experiences the complicated racial politics of wartime LA, and specifically the downward spiral of consequences that flow from him talking back to a southern white female colleague who abusively refuses to work alongside him.

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by Alex Pavey

South Central Los Angeles, Restricted Movement and the ‘Green Book’

It’s becoming clear that one of the central themes of my next thesis chapter will be mobility — or more specifically, the restrictions imposed on the mobility of black Angelenos, and the representation of this immobility in works of fiction and cinema spanning the post-war / mid-century / civil rights eras.

A flat tire puts an end to a day trip out of LA in Killer of Sheep (1977)

A flat tire frustrates plans for a day trip out of LA in Killer of Sheep (1978)

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