Thanks so much to the publisher and to NetGalley for giving me access to this book. A great biography about someone I didn't know much about. I really enjoyed learning so much about Himes. I am interested in reading some of his novels now.

Author Lawrence P. Jackson says in the acknowledgements, “I have endeavored to write the ‘big book’ that Michel and I thought Chester deserved.” In my estimation he has indeed succeeded in completing a big book that explores the life and work of Chester Himes. The research that obviously went into this definitive work had to be painstaking. The end notes are copious which indicates a careful and thorough examination of Chester Himes. It is fascinating to read about the struggles that Chester endured to bring his books to print. He apparently worked up quite a reputation within publishing circles, because he was extremely vigilant about every affront, slight or in his mind unwarranted criticism.

Chester Himes was what one would call a ‘race man’ and his novels reflected that. "But what was holding him back was his everlasting resistance to a world
that did not have a place for a black artist who didn’t emphasize the value of assimilation."

His indictment of America and her treatment of Black people were a consistent theme throughout many of his novels. He was on the scene before Richard Wright and had already published novels to critical acclaim when Ralph Ellison wrote Invisible Man which opened the eyes of the NY publishing world and they began to look anew at Black authors.

It's amazing that Himes didn’t get the full applause until later in his life, although the talent he brought to the page was universally recognized early on. Chester first began writing in prison, having been given twenty years for a simple armed robbery. He ended up doing seven and a half years, and in prison is where he began his writing career. While the biography obviously focuses on Chester's life, the surrounding history of the cities Chester lived in and life for African- Americans in general is explored to great effect.

At nineteen years old and looking at twenty years, having lived through a prison fire that killed 322 inmates due to failure to act by the administration, "Writing was one activity that helped him overcome lonely isolation and puzzle through the welter of emotions after the fire.......His efforts to deal with the personal tragedy of incarceration, loneliness, physical vulnerability,....launched his writing career."

Himes would send out his short stories to magazines hoping they would bite and he began to have some success, becoming skilled at fictionalizing real life he had watched and experienced. Using characters to express his thoughts on subjects would be become a staple of his writing for decades. Quickly realizing that American whites "wished to read about themselves as forceful decision makers" he began to write prison stories with white protagonists and landed a series of stories in the upstart magazine Esquire.

He would leave prison and pursue writing as a career eventually publishing his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go to modest success a few weeks after the death of his mother. Himes lived from story to story most of his life filling in the lean times with odd jobs or leaning on the job of his wife to support himself. It wasn't until later in life that he begin to make real money writing and publishing, much of it due to his crime series, featuring detectives Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones, which he is probably most widely known for. The book Cotton Comes to Harlem was made into a movie that was very popular in the early 70's.

Himes actually found success in France before really becoming a literary name in his home of America. He lived in France, Spain and other places in Europe beginning in the early 1950's and would never officially live again in the United States. He died in Spain in 1984. This biography is one to place on the bookshelf as you may return to it frequently for reference to the publishing industry, for the atmosphere in France where many African-American artists found refuge, for the conditions of 60's America, for the overall struggle of a Black writer trying to make a living, and insight as to how racism can undergird the process of becoming.
I received this review copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The book will be available July 11, 2017.