Download or read book My Life of Absurdity written by Chester B. Himes and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author shares the experiences of his later years as an internationally known writer in Paris' expatriate cafe society

Download or read book The Autobiography of Chester Himes My life of absurdity written by Chester B. Himes and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book My Life of Absurdity written by Chester B. Himes and published by Paragon House Publishers. This book was released on 1972 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second volume in the autobiography of legendary writer Chester Himes talkes the reader into the heart of Paris expatriate cafe society in the 1950s, offering fascinating glimpse of lovers, three continents, and other black men like himself making their way as writers: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison.

Download or read book My Life of Absurdity written by Chester B. Himes and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Autobiography of Chester Himes The quality of hurt written by Chester B. Himes and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 1972 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Quality of Hurt written by Chester B. Himes and published by Michael Joseph. This book was released on 1973 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Autobiography of Chester Himes written by Chester B. Himes and published by Garden City, N.Y : Doubleday. This book was released on 1972 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Chester B Himes A Biography written by Lawrence P. Jackson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work Finalist for the PEN America/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography The definitive biography of the groundbreaking African American author who had an extraordinary legacy on black writers globally. Chester B. Himes has been called “one of the towering figures of the black literary tradition” (Henry Louis Gates Jr.), “the best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler” (San Francisco Chronicle), and “a quirky American genius” (Walter Mosely). He was the twentieth century’s most prolific black writer, captured the spirit of his times expertly, and left a distinctive mark on American literature. Yet today he stands largely forgotten. In this definitive biography of Chester B. Himes (1909–1984), Lawrence P. Jackson uses exclusive interviews and unrestricted access to Himes’s full archives to portray a controversial American writer whose novels unflinchingly confront sex, racism, and black identity. Himes brutally rendered racial politics in the best-selling novel If He Hollers Let Him Go, but he became famous for his Harlem detective series, including Cotton Comes to Harlem. A serious literary tastemaker in his day, Himes had friendships—sometimes uneasy—with such luminaries as Ralph Ellison, Carl Van Vechten, and Richard Wright. Jackson’s scholarship and astute commentary illuminates Himes’s improbable life—his middle-class origins, his eight years in prison, his painful odyssey as a black World War II–era artist, and his escape to Europe for success. More than ten years in the writing, Jackson’s biography restores the legacy of a fascinating maverick caught between his aspirations for commercial success and his disturbing, vivid portraits of the United States.

Download or read book Plan B written by Chester Himes and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The final, posthumous installment of the ground-breaking Harlem Detectives series, a novel of explosive, apocalyptic violence, and a startling vision of the effects of racism in America The roots of racism and persecution in Tomsson Black's ancestry are deep and staggering. In his own lifetime, his misfortunes have become unbearable and, as they mount, serve as an impetus for a final and cataclysmic act of vengeance—the violent overthrow of white society. When acclaimed crime writer Chester Himes died in Spain in 1984, it was rumored that an unfinished story in the Harlem Detective series existed that had all but extinguished his heroes and their fraught city in an explosive paroxysm of racial strife. Completed from his notes by Michel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner, Plan B is that harrowing story. Includes an illuminating introduction by editors Michel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner.

Download or read book The Quality of Hurt written by Chester B. Himes and published by . This book was released on 1995-11-01 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a look at the author's early life in the Black ghetto and his later literary success

Download or read book A Rage in Harlem written by Chester B. Himes and published by Penguin Classics. This book was released on 2024-06-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jackson's woman has found him a foolproof way to make money - a technique for turning ten dollar bills into hundreds. But when the scheme somehow fails, Jackson is left broke, wanted by the police and desperately racing to get back both his money and his loving Imabelle. The first of Chester Himes's novels featuring the hardboiled Harlem detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, A Rage in Harlem has swagger, brutal humour, lurid violence, a hearse loaded with gold and a conman dressed as a Sister of Mercy.

Download or read book If He Hollers Let Him Go written by Chester Himes and published by Serpent's Tail. This book was released on 2010-12-02 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Jones is a crew leader in a naval shipyard in Los Angeles in the 1940s. He should have a lot going for him, being educated, with a steady job and a steady relationship. But in the four days covered in this novel, the impossibility of life as a black man in a white world is made devastatingly clear. Jones is surrounded by prejudice, suspicion and paranoia, and his daily experiences influence his thoughts, dreams and behaviour. Immediately recognised as a masterful expose of racism in everyday life, If He Hollers Let Him Go is Chester Himes' first book, originally published in 1945.

Download or read book Chester Himes written by James Sallis and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] smart, conscientious, often stylish biography” of the great African American crime writer of the mid-twentieth century (The New York Times). Best known for The Harlem Cycle, the series of crime stories featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, Chester Himes was a novelist and memoirist whose work was neglected and underappreciated in his native America during the 1950s and ’60s, even as he was awarded France’s most prestigious crime fiction prize. In this major biography, literary critic and fellow writer James Sallis examines the life of this “fascinating figure,” combining interviews of those who knew Himes best—including his second wife—with insightful and poignant writing (Publishers Weekly). “Himes wrote some of the 20th century’s most memorable crime fiction and has been compared to Jim Thompson, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett. His life was just as spectacular as his novels. Sentenced to 25 years in prison for armed robbery when he was 19, he turned to writing while behind bars and, when released after serving eight years, published two novels. Their poor reception by the white establishment only confirmed Himes’s beliefs about racism in America. He eventually moved to Paris, spending most of the rest of his life abroad. While in Paris, he began to produce the crime fiction that would make him famous, including A Rage in Harlem and Cotton Comes to Harlem . . . [a] riveting biography.” —Library Journal (starred review) “Satisfying, thoughtful, long-overdue.” —Publishers Weekly “As intelligent, and as much fun to read, as a book by Himes himself. There is no higher praise.” —The Times (London)

Download or read book Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green written by Johnny Rico and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 2008-12-24 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outrageous, hilarious, and absolutely candid, Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green is Johnny Rico’s firsthand account of fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, a memoir that also reveals the universal truths about the madness of war. No one would have picked Johnny Rico for a soldier. The son of an aging hippie father, Johnny was overeducated and hostile to all authority. But when 9/11 happened, the twenty-six-year-old probation officer dropped everything to become an “infantry combat killer.” But if he’d thought that serving his country would be the kind of authentic experience a reader of The Catcher in the Rye would love, he quickly realized he had another thing coming. In Afghanistan he found himself living a Lord of the Flies existence among soldiers who feared civilian life more than they feared the Taliban–guys like Private Cox, a musical prodigy busy “planning his future poverty,” and Private Mulbeck, who didn’t know precisely which country he was in. Life in a combat zone meant carnage and courage–but it also meant tedious hours standing guard, punctuated with thoughtful arguments about whether Bea Arthur was still alive. Utterly uncensored and full of dark wit, Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green is a poignant, frightening, and heartfelt view of life in this and every man’s army.

Download or read book Harlem Shuffle written by Colson Whitehead and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is “fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny ... about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel" (San Francisco Chronicle). "Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either. Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the "Waldorf of Harlem"—and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes. Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs? Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto!

Download or read book Pinktoes written by Chester B. Himes and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1996 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sex farce deemed to be Himes's most daring work of fiction

Download or read book I was Dora Suarez written by Derek Raymond and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2011 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, the reader is immediately plunged into the horrific mind of one of the most brutally damaged and murderous killers the unnamed Detective Sergeant has ever faced: a deranged axe-murderer. But why the victim--the gentle Dora Suarez--was murdered at all becomes the Sergeant's obsession, especially as he digs deeper into a diary she left behind and learns she was already dying of AIDS. So why kill her?