I have just finished reading a book review about an African American author named Chester B. Himes (1904 - 1984).
If any member/guest is interested in African American writers, you might consider reading some of Mr. Himes's books.
*****
Here are just a few points from that review:
1. "Today, Himes's belief in the implacable force of white supremacy -- what is now called Afro-pessimism -- enjoys a growing vogue among black intellectuals."
2. "His unsparing depiction of black poverty, his insistence on the sheer ugliness of social misery, seem rather dated in an age when black American writers, artists and film makers have been creating more redemptive visions of the inner city."
3. "[O]f all the injuries inflicted by racism, the one that he resented most was its destruction of patriarchal masculinity."
4. "The only black intellectual Himes praised without reservation was Malcolm X."
5. He wrote his memoirs called The Quality of Hurt and My Life of Absurdity.
a. The book reviewer feels that together they "comprise one of the great autobiographies of literary exile [Mr. Himes eventually moved to France]": "brave in its self-scrutiny, meticulous in its anatomy of the physical and emotional toll of racism, gripping in its portrait of a sensitive, volatile, sometimes monstrous man."
*****
Title of article: "Writing Absurdity"
Author: Adam Shatz (who is reviewing Chester B. Himes: A Biography by Lawrence P. Jackson)
Magazine: London Review of Books (print edition of April 26, 2018)
If any member/guest is interested in African American writers, you might consider reading some of Mr. Himes's books.
*****
Here are just a few points from that review:
1. "Today, Himes's belief in the implacable force of white supremacy -- what is now called Afro-pessimism -- enjoys a growing vogue among black intellectuals."
2. "His unsparing depiction of black poverty, his insistence on the sheer ugliness of social misery, seem rather dated in an age when black American writers, artists and film makers have been creating more redemptive visions of the inner city."
3. "[O]f all the injuries inflicted by racism, the one that he resented most was its destruction of patriarchal masculinity."
4. "The only black intellectual Himes praised without reservation was Malcolm X."
5. He wrote his memoirs called The Quality of Hurt and My Life of Absurdity.
a. The book reviewer feels that together they "comprise one of the great autobiographies of literary exile [Mr. Himes eventually moved to France]": "brave in its self-scrutiny, meticulous in its anatomy of the physical and emotional toll of racism, gripping in its portrait of a sensitive, volatile, sometimes monstrous man."
*****
Title of article: "Writing Absurdity"
Author: Adam Shatz (who is reviewing Chester B. Himes: A Biography by Lawrence P. Jackson)
Magazine: London Review of Books (print edition of April 26, 2018)
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