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Chester Bomar Himes (July 29, 1909 – November 12, 1984) was an American writer. His works, some of which have been filmed, include If He Hollers Let Him Go, published in 1945, and the Harlem Detective series of novels for which he is best known, set in the 1950s and early 1960s and featuring two black policemen called Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. In 1958, Himes won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
The family later settled in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents' marriage was unhappy and eventually ended in divorce.
His first stories appeared in 1931 in The Bronzeman and, starting in 1934, in Esquire. His story "To What Red Hell" (published in Esquire in 1934) as well as to his novel Cast the First Stone – only much later republished unabridged as Yesterday Will Make You Cry (1998) – dealt with the catastrophic prison fire Himes witnessed at Ohio Penitentiary in 1930.
In 1934, Himes was transferred to London Prison Farm and in April 1936 was released on parole into his mother's custody. Following his release, he worked at part-time jobs while continuing to write. During this period, he came into contact with Langston Hughes, who facilitated Himes's entree into the world of literature and publishing.
In 1937, Himes married Jean Johnson.Jackson, Lawrence P. (August 8, 2015), "A Little Hysterical: The Young Lives of Chester and Jean", Los Angeles Review of Books.
Mike Davis in , describing the prevalence of racism in Hollywood in the 1940s and '50s, cites Himes' brief career as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers, terminated when Jack L. Warner heard about him and said: "I don't want no niggers on this lot."Davis, Mike. City of Quartz (1990). Verso, 2006, p. 43. Himes later wrote in his autobiography:
Back on the East Coast Himes received a scholarship at the Yaddo artists' community, where he stayed and worked in May and June 1948, in a room opposite Patricia Highsmith's.Sallis, James, Chester Himes. A Life. Walker & Company, New York, 2000, p. 150.
In Paris in the late 1950s Chester met his second wife, Lesley Packard, when she interviewed him for the Herald Tribune; she wrote a fashion column there under the name of "Monica". He described her as "Irish-English with blue-gray eyes and very good looking"; he also saw her courage and resilience, Chester said to Lesley: "You're the only true color-blind person I've ever met in my life." After he suffered a stroke, in 1959, Lesley quit her job and nursed him back to health. She cared for him for the rest of his life, and worked with him as his informal editor, proofreader, confidante and, as the director Melvin Van Peebles dubbed her, "his watchdog". After a long engagement, they were married in 1978, as Chester Himes was still legally married to his first wife, Jean, and only able to gain a divorce that year.Sallis, Chester Himes. A Life, 2000, p. 169.
Lesley and Chester faced adversities as a mixed-race couple but they prevailed. Their circle of political colleagues and creative friends included towering figures Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, Carl Van Vechten, Picasso, Jean Miotte, Ollie Harrington, Nikki Giovanni, Ishmael Reed and John A. Williams. Williams based the main character of his 1967 novel The Man Who Cried I Am on Himes. Bohemian life in Paris would in turn lead Lesley and Chester to the South of France and finally on to Spain, where they lived until Chester's death in 1984.
In 1996, Himes's widow Lesley Himes went to New York to work with Ed Margolies on the first biographical treatment of Himes's life, entitled The Several Lives of Chester Himes, by long-time Himes scholars Edward Margolies and Michel Fabre, published in 1997 by University Press of Mississippi. Later, novelist and Himes scholar James Sallis published a more deeply detailed biography of Himes called Chester Himes: A Life (2000).Margaret Busby (October 21, 2000), "Do the Harlem shuffle", The Guardian.
A detailed examination of Himes's writing and writings about him can be found in Chester Himes: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography compiled by Michel Fabre, Robert E. Skinner, and Lester Sullivan (Greenwood Press, 1992).
In 2017, Lawrence P. Jackson published a significant biography of Himes, more than 600 pages in length, titled Chester B. Himes: A Biography. Reviewing the biography for Johns Hopkins Magazine, Bret McCabe noted it makes the case that while "Himes's debut, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), is as admired today as it was in its time... its follow-up, Lonely Crusade (1947), is overlooked and underappreciated, and positions it as a key text in reckoning both Himes's subsequent career and later works."
Chester Himes wrote about African Americans in general, especially in two books that are concerned with labor relations and African-American workplace issues. If He Hollers Let Him Go—which contains many autobiographical elements—is about a black shipyard worker in Los Angeles during World War II struggling against racism, as well as his own violent reactions to racism. Lonely Crusade is a longer work that examines some of the same issues.
Cast the First Stone (1952) is based on Himes's experiences in prison. It was Himes's first novel but was not published until about ten years after it was written. One reason may have been Himes's unusually candid treatment – for that time – of a homosexual relationship. Originally written in the third person, it was rewritten in the first person in a more "hard-boiled" style. Yesterday Will Make You Cry (1993), published after Himes's death, restored the original manuscript. The restored 1998 edition includes a 1997 introduction by filmmaker and writer Melvin Van Peebles.
Himes also wrote a series of Harlem Detective novels featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, New York City police detectives in Harlem. The novels feature a mordant emotional timbre and a fatalistic approach to street situations. are often part of the story, and funeral director H. Exodus Clay is a recurring character in these books.
The titles of the series include A Rage in Harlem, The Real Cool Killers, The Crazy Kill, All Shot Up, The Big Gold Dream, The Heat's On, Cotton Comes to Harlem, and Blind Man with a Pistol; all written between 1957 and 1969. The final entry in the series was to be Plan B, published posthumously in 1983.
Cotton Comes to Harlem was made into a movie in 1970, which was set in that time period, rather than the earlier period of the original book. A sequel, Come Back, Charleston Blue, based upon The Heat's On, was released in 1972. For Love of Imabelle was made into a film under the title A Rage in Harlem in 1991. In the 1980s, British publisher Allison and Busby reprinted several of the Harlem detective novels in editions that featured paintings by Edward Burra on the covers.
In May 2011, and again in 2020 Penguin Modern Classics in London republished five of Himes's detective novels from the Harlem Cycle. The literary estate is overseen by Chester and Lesley's "niece" Sarah Pirozek (daughter of Lesley's best and oldest friend).
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