If He Hollers Let Him Go

by Chester Himes, Jake Arnott (Introduction)

Robert Jones has a lot going for him: a steady job, a steady relationship and plenty of prospects, despite his constant struggle for survival as a back man in a white man's world. If He Hollers Let Him Go follows four days oh Jones' life, culminating in a devestating accusation that threatens every element of Jones' precarious existence.

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 to great acclaim.

Genres: Fiction, African American, Classics, Mystery, Race, Novels, Noir

262 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

Chester Bomar Himes began writing in the early 1930s while serving a prison sentence for armed robbery. From there, he produced short stories for periodicals such as Esquire and Abbott's Monthly. When released, he focussed on semi-autobiographical protest novels.

In 1953, Himes emigrated to France, where he was approached by Marcel Duhamel of Gallimard to write a detective series for Série Noire, which had published works from the likes of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson. Himes would be the first black author included in the series. The resulting Harlem Cycle gained him celebrity when he won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for La Reine des Pommes (now known in English as A Rage in Harlem) in 1958. Three of these novels have been adapted into movies: Cotton Comes to Harlem, directed by Ossie Davis in 1970; Come Back, Charleston Blue (based on The Heat's On) in 1972; and A Rage in Harlem, starring Gregory Hines and Danny Glover in 1991.

In 1968, Himes moved to Spain where he made his home until his death.

Reviews

[Reggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Racism is a Horror Story.

Always has been.

Always will be.

Not only is it a horror story, because of The car wreck effect is has. The effect when you say a car fucked up on the side of the road so you slow down. Causing the traffic that we all hated prior to quarantine.

It's also a Horror Story because it is entertaining. At least the publishers think so. Look at the amount of books available that touch on the topic. In various ways, shapes and forms. Being something important to discuss couldn't be the only reason why so many of these books exist. They also entertain. Perhaps the real question is who is being entertained? Maybe everyone? Who knows.

Bob Jones, the protagonist of Chester Himes's debut novel If He Hollers Let Him Go, is not being entertained. As a matter of fact,, he is overwhelmed. Bob Jones proves that you can only remain in the status of "viewer" in order to be entertained by this kind of horror. There's nothing entertaining when you are an active recipient.

Nothing entertaining about the possibility of losing your job for attempting to politely delegate a task to your white colleague, or getting jumped by white colleagues after winning a game of dice fair & square. Nothing entertaining about that racism being so pervasive that it pervades your own community. So much so that your girlfriend's mother is telling you how there's only a certain kind of Black folk who deserve the opportunities that the United States can potentially afford.

& this is just the starter kit.

If He Hollers is a novel that, perhaps unintentionally, shows how quickly the hopes & dreams of those who participated in the great migration were killed. A novel that shows how some left world of Jim Crow just go to another world of Jim Crow.

Hey, at least this version of Jim Crow had palm trees to look at (the novel is set in Los Angeles of the 1940s).

Class, colorism, fetishization, the power dynamics of sexual relations, paranoia, fear, self-dependency & more combine to give you this very digestible soup.

It's a good thing that Himes effortlessly infuses humor in this 1945 novel, because for better or worse...

You will be entertained.

------------------------------------------------

@ablackmanreading (Instagram) and I get on Instagram Live every Sunday at 4PM EST.

The link below is to Part One of our Two Part discussion on If He Hollers Let Him Go.

We gave the novel 4 hours of our time in total (2 episodes, 2 hours a piece).

Thank you, and I hope you'll enjoy.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CIMV9xQn...

[Kiekiat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I originally gave this book three stars, but have decided to add a fourth. This is a grim book. It was also the first novel Chester Himes wrote and would be followed by three other "grim" books that people didn't want to read. They didn't want to read them because they present the issue of racism against black people in America from a black man's perspective, illuminating some uncomfortable truths about racism in the USA. "If He Hollers Let Him Go" is narrated by the book's protagonist--Bob Jones, a black man working in a naval shipyard in Los Angeles in 1940's America. Bob is doing fairly well considering his race and the time period he lives in. He supervises a work crew, drives a nice car, has an educated girlfriend who is a social worker and the daughter of a prominent physician.

If He Hollers...is about the unraveling of Bob's life over a period of four days.

Chester Himes does a terrific job of giving us the inner life of a complex man who faces harassment and discrimination every day of his life. Bob Jones is not by nature a man who just goes along to get along and his life begins to unravel when he speaks out against the racism he faces at work. He is a man torn between living a comfortable life or pushing back against the oppression that weighs on him as he goes about his daily life. His social worker girlfriend, who comes from an affluent background, especially for a black female of that era, tries to get him to not make waves, to accept the abuse from white people at work and in the larger world, where Bob is harried by police, is denied admission to many establishments and is relegated to life as a second-class citizen.

Bob ponders the inequities of his life situation as a black male in a racist land. Unwilling to accept his "inferior" status, Bob makes a reservation for him and his girlfriend at a fancy restaurant that doesn't serve black people. The couple is seated at the fancy eating place in a back area and a noticeable pall signalling disapprobation settles over the crowd of white diners. Bob ignores the silent opprobrium of the white patrons. He is served, reluctantly, and his waiter makes it clear that by daring to eat at the swank restaurant he has crossed a line a black man should never cross. When the check comes, a message advising him never to dine there again is written on the bill.

Over the course of the four days, Bob is hectored and brought to heel by the white world, regardless of how he's behaving. Bob's attempt to stand up for himself after being grossly insulted at work sets in motion a seemingly ineluctable path to his destruction. The ending is not pretty--and not an ending that most white Americans of the time would have liked to know about. Surprisingly, "If He Hollers" sold fairly well for a first novel, especially one penned by a black novelist.

Himes is most famous for his "Harlem Series" of eight books of noir crime novels featuring two black police officers--Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. Himes began writing these crime novels while living in Paris, where he had moved to escape the widespread racism in the United States. These "Harlem" novels are entertaining and well-written, but are slight compared to his novels depicting the real lives of black people. Himes turned to writing pulp fiction because his subsequent novels shining the light on US racism did not sell enough copies to support him. I recommend this book to all readers, with the caveat that if you're looking for an uplifting story, you'd better look elsewhere.

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4.5* of five

Many long years ago, this book and I crossed paths while I was working at Thunder's Mouth Press. I was gobsmacked by the rawness of Bob Jones's hate and fury. I would never have imagined the horrors of racism and the vileness of color prejudice among African Americans NOT inducing hatred and rage, but Himes was such an amazing writer that I experienced Bob Jones's feelings as deeply as my own.

I can't think of a reason that you wouldn't already have read this book, but if for some reason you have not, do so. Now. Soon, at the very least. The opportunity to experience writing like Chester Himes's is not to be missed. The sad and deflating truth is that the novel is as relevant to today's African American experience as it was to World War II's.

That makes me a little ill and a lot sad.

I can't give the book the full five because, to be frank, I found the rape-centered part of the story off-puttingly positively portrayed. No actual rape occurs, to be sure, but the topic...well, it's one that I don't find anything redeeming in and thus I judge even a hint of positive portrayal harshly.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely amazing book written not only by one of the best African American writers, but one of the best writers of the 20th century, who had to move to Europe since there was no place in the America of the 50s and 60s for a black man to be a creative and successful writer expressing the reality of being a person of color in this country. While he made his living writing noir novels based on 2 great characters, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, both black NYC detectives based in Harlem and from which 2 lame movies were made, Cotton Comes to Harlem and A Rage in Harlem, If He Hollers is an epic novel set in WWII-era LA and is about an educated black man working in the navy shipyards and engaged to the daughter of a successful black doctor. While he deals with racism on a daily basis, his fiancee has been sheltered from its effects thus far. I recommended this book to my brother, and when he was done I asked him whose work it most reminded him of, and he immediately said Steinbeck, which is exactly what I thought. So if you liked East of Eden or Grapes of Wrath, I guarantee you will like this book equally as much.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first novel from Chester Himes has some good characters & sharp dialogue, but for me it doesn't come up to the standard of his later work. It still packs a punch & has plenty to say about racism, while the author's style is sometimes as aggressive as his characters. However, it isn't in the same league as some of his other novels like The Real Cool Killers or Cotton Comes To Harlem which can easily be read more than once.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

The setting of this novel is Los Angeles during World War II. The main character, Bob Jones, is an African-American man, who gets a job at a defense shipyard there, and is the narrator of this story. Bob is, in fact, the supervisor of a small crew of other African-Americans. The action takes place just after the forced internment of Japanese-Americans in California, which kind of sets the stage for how Bob sees himself as a black man in white Los Angeles. He's also in a situation where, because most of the able-bodied men have gone off to war, there's an influx of laborers, both white and African-American, men and women. He often ruminates about his existence as a black man, realizing that even with his position as supervisor, other supervisors will not share their white workers when he needs them to do so, or that he is not wanted in white, middle-class restaurants or other establishments. In short, Bob is aware that as an African-American man at this time, he's being oppressed, and the whole symbolism (imho) of the Japanese internment reminds him constantly that it could happen to him at any time for any reason.

Bob has a girlfriend, Alice, who, since her father is a very well-paid physician, lives a very middle-class sort of life. Alice is fair-skinned and a social worker, entertaining herself with intellectual friends. When Bob tries to explain how he feels because of being African-American in Los Angeles, Alice tries to explain to him that if he'd just let all of these feelings of white oppression go, and find himself a place in the middle-class scene, life would be so much easier for him. Alice is sort of a dreamer, who doesn't want to come to terms with her heritage; she really has no clue. Bob, on the other hand, can't ignore the realities of his life, and this hits home one day on the job when a trashy white woman laborer from Texas calls him the n-word and he reacts in kind, setting off a chain of events that snowball out of control.

I liked this book, and I'll probably read many more by this author in the future. His characters were believable, the setting was entirely believable and as a reader, you get into Bob's head very quickly and you stay with him the entire time. Himes is an awesome writer. I would most definitely recommend this book to people who want a bit of grit in their reading, or to people who may have been previously on the fence about reading this author, but don't expect to come away with this upbeat 'cause it ain't gonna happen.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

1945–Besides Schuyler, what other author was writing this truthfully about the race fuckery of America in the superheroic Forties? Wright required scaffolding by the tonnage in his attempt to say something substantive, whereas Himes simply affords his reader the assumed intelligence to take it straight to the head with no sociological mystification clouding the bongwater required As you dig around the total mass of American letters from the 20th Century, Chester Himes’ name becomes increasingly frequent for a reason—he was a progenitor of what the recently-passed Sly Stone dubbed ‘a whole new thing.’ Goddamn it and yes; but in 2025 with the straits we’re in, what the fuck was it all for?

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

World War II-era novel about a man fighting his own personal war against racism and hometown sellouts. Although it would be years before Himes would begin writing crime fiction, the writing style in If He Hollers is distinctly hard-boiled, slash and burn, in other words, NOIR. Patricia Highsmith was a fan, and I can't think of no higher endorsement of Himes' great works.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book — kind of like the roman durs of Simenon

[Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ti tolleriamo (negro) finché stai al tuo posto. Ma devi starci

Chester Himes è conosciuto per i suoi polizieschi, sempre molto particolari, con quel costante, incisivo e acceso - spesso fiammeggiante - sguardo rivolto alla sua razza, quella afro-americana, sempre in lotta con il pregiudizio ma anche con se stessa.

I suoi polizieschi appaiono scalpitanti, caotici sotto molti aspetti, apparentemente disordinati ma caratteristici, romanzi di genere immersi in un contesto sociale che trasuda vita reale, quasi sempre vita periferica. In tutti i sensi.

In questo suo esordio del 1945, che di poliziesco non ha nulla, Himes è meno colorito, più diretto e lineare verso le questioni che vive sulla sua pelle: la discriminazione (subdola e non) verso gli afro-americani; la loro presunta integrazione nel mondo del lavoro; il desiderio per alcuni di essere quasi bianchi per meglio amalgamarsi; il senso di rabbiosa frustrazione per altri, come il protagonista Bob.
Si avverte, insomma, la condizione di "Ti tolleriamo (negro) finché stai al tuo posto. Ma devi starci, altrimenti ti ci facciamo stare noi."

Il bello di Himes è che non fa romanzi per famigliole, a modo suo vuole dare una scossa alle coscienze rimanendo alla larga da quei quadretti politically correct che proprio alle coscienze han timore di puntare. E qui siamo nel '45, 1945!

Il titolo originale del romanzo "If he hollers let him go" (letteralmente Se grida, lascialo andare) è il verso di una «conta», una filastrocca che i bambini americani scandiscono quando si deve eliminare dal gioco qualcuno.
Nel Sud degli Stati Uniti ha assunto una connotazione razzista, sostituendo a rooster (gallo) il termine nigger.
Il testo completo della conta (la nostra Ambarabá cicí cocó) è il seguente:
Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!
Catch a nigger by his toe!
If he hollers let him go!
Eenee, Meenee. Mainee, Mo!
You-are-It!

[Shāke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is gutwrenching, and accurately describes the complexity of Blackness, anti-Blackness, and white privilege. Broke my heart into a million pieces reading the raw truth of what we as Black people face... even in 2018.

[Brian Fagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chester Himes wrote If He Hollers Let Him Go in 1945, a chronicle of four tumultuous days in the life of Bob Jones, a black man living in L. A. in the World War II era. He works in the shipyards and we encounter the systematic racism he faces every day. Bob tries to ignore as many slights and insults as he can, but his flashpoint is crossed a number of times in the novel, generally with severe consequences. Himes is a talented writer, and to me, If He Hollers comes off as extreme realism. The dialogue is very well done.

Bob decides that he's going to kill a white worker who punched him out during a game of craps. He gets demoted when a white woman coworker cusses him and he cusses her back.

Bob's girlfriend, Alice, a social worker, tells him that he doesn't have the right approach to racism. But she never acknowledges that Black men probably face some different difficulties than Black women. And despite her experiences as a social worker, she unfortunately remains naive in important areas - for instance telling Bob, "a person just can't charge you with a crime you haven't committed".

There are almost as many psychological approaches to trying to cope with the evils of racism as there are people. Bob describes the way he looks at it:

"In the three years in L. A. I'd worked up to a good job in a shipyard, bought a new Buick car, and cornered off the finest colored chick west of Chicago - to my way of thinking. All I had to do was marry her and my future was in the bag. If a black boy couldn't be satisfied with that he couldn't be satisfied with anything.

But what I knew about myself was that my desire for such a life was conditional. It only caught up with me on the crest of being black - when I could accept being black, when I could see no other out, such a life looked great.

But I knew I'd wake up someday and say to hell with it. I didn't want to be the biggest Negro who ever lived, neither Touissant L'Ouverture nor Water White. Because deep inside of me, where the white folks couldn't see, it didn't mean a thing. If you couldn't swing down Hollywood Boulevard and know that you belonged; if you couldn't make a polite pass at Lana Turner at Ciro's without having the gendarmes beat the black off you for getting out of your place; if you couldn't eat a thirty-dollar dinner at an hotel without choking on the insults, being a great big 'Mister' nigger didn't mean a thing.

Anyone who wanted to could be nigger-rich, nigger-important, have their Jim Crow religion, and go to nigger heaven.

I'd settle for a leadsman job at Atlas Shipyard - if I could be a man, defined by Webster as a male human being. That's all I'd ever wanted - just to be accepted as a man - without ambition, without distinction, either of race, creed, or color; just a simple Joe walking down an American street, going my simple way, without any other identifying characteristics but weight, height, and gender."

[She Reads for Jesus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must-read for those who are literary fans of classic African American literature. Published in 1945, Chester Himes does a marvelous job capturing the vivid character Bob Jones, who endures racism while living in California, discrimination on his job, and color complexes among his Black American friends. The main character, Jones, resembles the character Bigger Thomas from Richard Wright's great novel 'Native Son', in that they both deal with the infectious disease of social racism. As a result, they both grappled feelings of inferiority, thoughts of murder, rape, and destruction upon the Anglo-Saxon population. Himes proves himself to be a wonderful literary genius with this novel.

[David Partikian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I use Goodreads to ostensibly avoid politics, some encroachment into the realm of the political is inevitable as the USA shuffles towards fascism at breakneck speed. Lately, in attempting to avoid the news, I, instead, end up absorbing it through osmosis, which is unavoidable; the awfulness is unfortunately gleaned while perusing headlines unwittingly with peripheral vision. Or I get into a “discussion” with some MAGA idiot and end up getting called “woke” without having even mentioned anything remotely concerning social justice.1 Reminder to anyone who has to deal with this “logic:” When a MAGA blowhard uses the acronym DEI, what he or she really means is, “I don’t like N’s.” Just substitute the verboten N word for DEI and their worldview makes perfect sense. Hence, I feel like revisiting one of my favorite books by a black writer, one who was indeed writing when America was supposedly “Great,” during World War II. The book, If He Hollers Let Him Go is an all but forgotten classic that paints a brutal portrait of life on the San Pedro waterfront during Jim Crow.


Back When America Was Great


If He Hollers Let Him Go is a no holds barred brutal account of the life of a black man working in a Los Angeles (San Pedro) shipyard during the pre-integrated Jim Crow society that was America during WWII; since black labor is needed during the war, some integration is tolerated, albeit reluctantly, which leads to even more overt racial hostility. Forget the microaggressions that make for so much useless news fodder nowadays, Chester Himes depicts a world of outright hostility by whites, a.k.a. “peckerwoods,” whose liberal use of the ‘n’ word appears on virtually every page, enraging the protagonist, Robert Jones.

Jones sees society through racial lenses, and from what he encounters, it is hard to argue with his pessimistic take on Jim Crow America. Peckerwoods harass him daily. His girlfriend, a lighter skinned black, is privy to social circles that exclude darker hues like his. His job in an ostensible supervisory capacity at the shipyard excludes his ability to ask any white laborer for help with a task, lest he—or in this case she—drops the 'n' word on him. Not to be undone, Jones retorts one day with “Cracker slut,” which brings about completely predictable results. The plot, which takes place over a mere few days, is inevitable. Racism is overt and endemic. The black man is bound to lose. No matter whether it be the Invisible Man, Rufus Scott, or Bigger Thomas the black protagonist can only correctly see his fate vis-à-vis white society; he cannot not alter it.

Chester Himes’ If He Hollers Let Him Go stands as a testament to what one hopes is a bygone era where people are primarily judged and pigeonholed by the darkness of their hues and their gender. Himes presents a pecking order within a society obsessed with race to the point where the narrative could stand as a sociological document, a J’Accuse against peckerwood society. His detailed account of labor in a shipyard has all the verité of Melville’s Pequod.

Amidst this squalid farrago of misogyny and racism is deliberately provocative writing. Any prescient undergraduate instructor in 2025 academia2 would nix teaching this novel in a nanosecond. It’s ability to offend, or at the very least, disgust, knows no bounds. Witness the wish-fulfillment of imagined rape in the passage below:

She was a peroxide blonde with a large-featured, overly made-up face, and she had a large, bright-painted, fleshy mouth, kidney-shaped, thinner in the middle than the ends. [. . .] She looked thirty and well-sexed, rife but not quite rotten. She looked as if she might have worked in a cat house, and if she hadn’t, she must have given a lot of it away. (Pg. 19).

So, what to do with this novel, which should serve as a triptych of required reading narrated by alienated black male protagonists, the other two being Native Son and Invisible Man? The outlook is bleak and—as I mentioned above—inevitable. The only question for a reader is the minuscule difference in nuance between the fate of the Invisible Man and Bigger Thomas and Rob Jones. Of the three novels, If He Hollers Let Him Go seems to be the one that is relegated to all but forgotten status.3 A shame because—although it slogs towards the end—it is less mired in the bootless communist ideology that hijacks Invisible Man. If He Hollers Let Him Go is a brutal kick in the balls for all peckerwood readers.

1
Incipient fascism trumps racism. And then the two feed off each other. . .

2
Can an instructor even teach this book in a blooming dictatorship and circle jerk of white anti-intellectuals?

3
Invisible Man was still pretty much required reading when I was an undergraduate. Wright—admittedly—is not read much anymore. However, Himes is primarily remembered for writing potboiler genre detective novels, and not his stone-cold classic debut novel which is all but forgotten and only in and out of print in obscure paperback imprints with lousy font.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was written in 1945, before Himes’s Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones series, which came after, in the 50s and 60s, and resulted in him being labelled as a crime genre writer.
Amongst his claims to fame, Himes served time in the Ohio State Pentitentiary, in 1928, as part of a 25 year sentence for armed robbery (he served 8). It was while in prison he read Hammett Dashiell and Chandler Raymond and wrote some hard-boiled crime short stories.
This however, is a protest novel, and needs to be read and appreciated quite apart from his other work. It has the same punchy writing style, brisk style driven by dialogue, and a noir quality, but few other similarities.
It’s protagonist and narrator is anti-hero Robert Jones, a black shipyard worker, who has prospered thanks to the shortage of white workers during the Second World War. He has a girl friend from a well-to-do family, is highly respected at work, and has a draft deferment due to the importance of his job. But, he is well aware that simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time can bring a black man’s life crashing down around him, and sure enough this happens, when a woman he has crossed t work, falsely accuses him of rape.
It is not hard to get Himes’s message here, at every chance he takes a tangential departure from the plot to expose racism in the American middle class of the day. Prejudice is everywhere. It is not so much a question of exposing it, rather one of bringing it to the forefront, and not ignored, or taken as read.

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chester Himes penned this book showing the overt racism/bigotry of the day, the WW II years. Bob Jones our main character is a black "leaderman," a work gang supervisor in a shipyard in Los Angeles. He struggles with his boss, other white workers, women who work ship board and in the office, it is harsh, and Bob is angry with the world. He has every right to be.

His girlfriend is Alice, a social worker who comes from a naive bubble. Her parents are well-off, her father a rather well respected doctor in the community. Alice thinks that it can be cut and dry how Bob deals with the bigotry and the world, even though at times it is condescending.

We watch this story unfold and even though we get a sense of where it is heading, it's like a car wreck. We cannot look away. A harsh read to be sure, but necessary in my opinion, to be reminded of places we should not go.

Recommended.

[Viena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compré este libro a principios de noviembre antes de que cerraran las tiendas por el ¿segundo? confinamiento en Londres. Mientras paseaba por la librería un empleado que iba de aquí para allá con prisa se paró a mi lado para explicarme muy rápido que este libro era una narración impresionante, un "page-turner" según sus propias palabras. Me contó que Chester Himes se había mudado a Los Ángeles en los años 40 para trabajar como guionista en Hollywood y que le habían dado la vuelta por ser negro. Me dijo que parecía que todo lo que había vivido esos años lo había plasmado en este libro. Me sorprendió tanto su pasión y el hecho de que se parara a contarme todo esto tan atropelladamente cuando claramente tenía tanto trabajo que decidí llevármelo.

Ha transcurrido más de un mes desde que lo terminara y entremedias he leído otras tres novelas, y aun así no puedo quitármelo de la cabeza. Y ojo, que Las malas de Camila Sosa Villada ha sido increíble. Pero de hecho, cuanto más leía a Camila más me maravillaba y más impactaba quedaba, y más pensaba sobre la similar emoción que había sentido leyendo If He Hollers Let Him Go.

Ciertamente este libro me había absorbido mientras lo leía y el impacto (no de los sucesos, que no sorprenden a nadie, sino de la crudeza de las emociones del protagonista) que sentí a lo largo de la narración me dejó un poco pasmada cuando lo terminé, por lo que me prometí darme un tiempo para recobrarme y reflexionar sobre ello.

El relato es cuando menos visceral. Nos cuenta la historia de Bob, un capataz de la construcción que parece ser la personificación literaria de Himes. Bob está aterrorizado y se lo come la ira. Vive en un mundo que no le quiere, que desconfía de él y en el que él no se siente seguro. La historia se sucede y nos cuenta lo de siempre, lo del racismo. Gestos que son discusiones que son violencia. Y el ciclo no se detiene.
Los hechos se desarrollan con calma pero la cabeza de Bob no para, no encuentra salida ni escapatoria alguna. No solo del atolladero principal de la historia, que bastante es de por sí, sino de todos los estímulos a su alrededor que lo empujan a una vida llena de ansiedad. Todas sus emociones, tan magníficamente reflejadas en la página producen en el lector el desasosiego y la urgencia de una escalada en la que no sabes que acaecerá finalmente. A veces parece que todo va a salir bien y dos páginas después te esperas lo peor. Tal vez fuera este ritmo emocional tan vertiginoso lo que me dejó deslumbrada. Lo que sé es que, de tener la oportunidad, tenéis que leerlo; es realmente un imprescindible.

[Shelly L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Snow wasn't the only blanket of whiteness in the Minnesota of my childhood. Growing up, I didn't grasp the history of, present reality of, or pervasive machinery of racism. Did not get it at all. I mean, I was watching Sesame Street, reading Dr. Seuss, and listening to Free to Be You and Me. Everything was coolio. When shown A Class Divided in elementary school, I marvelled at how people could look down on other people just for the way they look. Ridiculous! With every episode of Star Trek, I felt that racism was an ignorance we'd soon leave behind. With every laugh track on The Archie Bunker Show, I felt it would be dead and gone before I came of age. I recall shock and horror when I dropped into a social studies classroom a few minutes early to find two boys slinging racial slurs around. Loud and proud, like they did it every day. While my teacher sat by, trying to eat his lunch, mind his own business. In. Social. Studies. How could this be? Why didn't someone stop them? How could kids at my nearly homogenous high school, in my milky state, in my modern time be haters — and who exactly were they hating on?! Did not get it at all. In college, I took an amazing course on the civil rights movement. The material we covered opened my eyes even as the class itself shut my mouth. In that classroom, I was a minority. My thoughts were suspect. My knowledge was lacking. My poise was lacking, too. I had much to learn. We watched Eyes on the Prize and read oodles of stuff, and I did learn. Slowly. Reading this book was a jolt. I felt a powerful shift in perspective, a painful consciousness raising. I suddenly saw what white privilege is. I wanted more people to read it and see it, too. The more the better. And that's how I got kicked out of book group. It was a couple years later, and we weren't in college anymore. I missed reading and discussing books with people when along came the book group craze. Whoo! Mistake #1 was when I joined this particular book group. Mistake #2 was when they agreed to read this book at my suggestion. Mistake #3 was when one of them said something lazy and privileged and not getting it at ALL, and I went all verbal jujitsu on him. I'm an English major, man! There's nothing I love more than debating literary evidence for pity's sake. Plus, he was lazy and I enjoyed showing him exactly how lazy ... and, welp. I was no doubt insufferable. He later called me up and passive aggressively asked me to "... rethink my commitment to book group." Which I most certainly did. And I never went back. And I still don't do book groups. #MapMyReadingLife

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

A racially charged story. It is intense, powerful, and painful to read. I do not recommend reading it if you want a feel good book. This will leave you feeling as though the life has been sucked out of you. It deals primarily with the day to day issues of a young black man (Bob Jones) in Los Angeles during WWII. It spans 4 days in his life in which he is confronted with inequality left and right, on the job, during his drive to work, at the movies, at dinner - anywhere and everywhere he turns.

There are two major female characters in the story, his upper class girlfriend Alice, who is dealing with her own issues regarding race in her own way and within her own social class, and Madge, a white female worker at his job site who refuses to work with him and calls him a nigger - prompting him to call her names back and subsequently get demoted. These two relationships are used to illustrate two different sides of Bob. With Madge (and the others on the job) he is constantly trying to hold back his urges to hurt, rape, and fight as he deals with being treated unfairly and has too much pride to let it go simply because he is one color and they are another. With Alice, he has the opportunity to change his social standing, and although they have trouble seeing eye-to-eye about their color, she eventually has a major impact on his outlook in regards to his color, convincing him that although his color may restrict him in regards to economic factors, it should have no bearing over other concrete things and core values like love, family, integrity, and courage. This is a big turning point in Bob's psychological outlook but it is short lived.

Due to unfortunate circumstances he ends up alone with Madge. She thinks she's going to be in trouble for slacking off on the job and turns the spotlight on his to defer the attention away from herself claiming rape. She has him beaten and arrested and he goes back to his old way of thinking. Alice tries to convince him to be rational and she will help him fight the charges in court but he runs. In the end he is "pardoned" and forced to enlist in the army, which made me think back to something one of the other black men working with him had said earlier on in the book about a black man being in the army. That such a man is only fighting against himself. Fighting for the right to keep on taking the same old crap. Like I said, painful to read. But a great read and an easy one as well.

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very powerful book, probably the closest thing in print a white man can come to experiencing what it's like to live in a world where no matter what you do you're always a "boy" - a second-class citizen. I particularly liked Himes' ability to look at the many ways African-Americans cope with that status.

I think it's better today than when this book first appeared in 1945 but then I read about a private swimming pool that barred a bunch of black children from swimming there (after they had joined) because they caused the white parents too much anxiety, and I live in LA and know how segregated people still are here.

I became aware of Himes through a quotation in Mike Davis' City of Quartz which deserves repeating here:

Up to the age of 31 I had been hurt emotionally, spiritually, and physically as much as 31 years can bear: I had lived in the South, I had fallen down an elevator shaft, I had been kicked out of college, I had served seven and one half years in prison, I had survived the humiliating last five years of the Depression in Cleveland; and still I was entire, complete, functional; my mind was sharp, my reflexes were good, and I was not bitter. But under the mental corrosion of race prejudice in Los Angeles I had become bitter and saturated with hate. (City of Quartz, p. 43)

Definitely a book that should be read.

[Carol Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow I managed not to know about Chester Himes until recently, when Isabel Wilkerson recommended this book in an article in The New York Times Book Review. Himes is a classic writer on a par with Richard Wright. But Bob Jones, the protagonist, is nothing like Bigger Thomas.

Bob works as a supervisor in a shipyard near Los Angeles during World War II. He has to contend with racism. He also has difficulty with Alice, the woman he's in love with, a member of the African-American elite who keeps assuring him that if he just tries to get along with white people and not get bothered, he'll do well.

Of course, she's wrong.

Bob keeps falling into one trap after another. He understands systemic racism better than Alice does.

This is a fine book. I'm sorry that I didn't discover it sooner.

[Kinga · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5...blistering account of endemic racism in the US during the 40s.

[Krys · Rating 4 out of 5]

A ferocious howl of a novel that resonates across the decades into our contemporary political climate. In this no-holds-barred confrontation with racism during the Great Migration, Bob Jones as a protagonist is mean, misogynistic and mad as hell about the daily indignities he has to suffer on the job and in his love life. The prose seethes with his raw fury and (self-)hatred, the staccato of its sentences sounding as if they were spat out in pure spite. Often, it reminded me of how the violence that the oppressed or the marginalised experiences is never ambient and always blatant. If you're surrounded by violence everyday, it becomes hard to ignore. If He Hollers Let Him Go is proof of this sentiment to a fault. It's a brutal and ugly book that's far from polite, which is probably why it continues to be overlooked. Even today, nearly eighty years later, I imagine there would be great difficulty in it being published. As Chester Himes' friend said to him, "These aren't things white people want to hear about."

Though it's clearly a protest novel, it's hardly didactic. Instead the novel manages to transform its polemic into something akin to hard-boiled noir as Bob Jones goes on the prowl in southern California to exact vengeance for the insults he's had to bear, and to bury the shame and agony that clings to him like a second skin. Amidst its sound and fury, I was most drawn to the arguments between Bob Jones and his girlfriend Alice, a white-passing upper-middle class black woman, their words tearing into the uncomfortable truths of black experience as they tore each other apart. Everything ends up as collateral damage.

'But these people are already here,' Cleo pointed out. 'The ghetto's already formed. The problem now is how best to integrate the people of this ghetto into the life of the community.' She turned to me; I'd been silent long enough, 'What do you think, Mr. Jones?'
'About what?' I asked.
She threw a look at me. 'I mean what is your opinion as to the problem arising from conditions in Little Tokyo?'
Well, sister, you're asking for it, I thought. Aloud I said: 'Well, now, I think we ought to kill the coloured residents and eat them. In that way we'll not only solve the race problem but alleviate the meat shortage as well.'
There was a shocked silence for an instant, then Polly broke into a raucous laugh. Alice said softly, 'Bob!'
All I wanted was for them to get the hell out of there so I could be alone with Alice, but I lightened up a little out of common courtesy. 'All kidding aside,' I said, 'if I knew any solution for the race problem I'd use it for myself first of all.'

[Priscilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chester Hime’s novel surpasses mere fiction; it stands as a historical narrative of the profound impact of systemic racism on individuals. Set in 1940s California during World War ll, the story revolves around Bob, a Black man whose journey exposes the harsh realities beneath the veil of Californian promises.

Far from the promised land of opportunity, California reveals itself as a land of disillusionment for Bob and countless migrants seeking a better life. Hime’s portrayal aligns closely with scholarly accounts of Black American experiences, illustrating the struggle against systemic racism, racial class divides, colorism, patriarchy, and the destruction of one’s identity.

We follow Bob for only 4 days, and in that span we experience the highs and devastating lows of his life. We witness his profound sense of emasculation and self-loathing fueled by pervasive white supremacy, which infiltrates every aspect of his existence. Himes masterfully captures the internal turmoil of a man grappling with his worth in a society designed to diminish it based on skin color alone.

“I think the only function of the black writer in America now is just to produce works of literature about whatever he wants to write about…At least the world will be informed about the black Americans’ subconscious.” - Chester Himes, 1970

[Tricia Halili-Felse · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my new favorites. This book is like a kick in the gut; a really raw and gritty glimpse into the world of Blackness, white privilege, and what it means to live being Black in a world that you can never catch a break in.

And also how you can’t help but be hyper conscious of race; it places a limit on everything you do, but being so aware of it takes over you. No matter what you do it’ll take over your life in every way. At its core, this book is about how American society takes away all the good things in Bob’s life and won’t stop until there’s nothing left for him. It’s also about how racism and its constant presence in his life makes Bob descend into madness and irrationality.

It takes the vast idea of race and inequality and frames it in a way that I think is really tangible and gives you a feel for how it plays out in the world. It’s also so rich with analysis and is a beautifully crafted dive into Bob’s mind. WOW this was amazing

[Daniel Polansky]

A black worker in a naval plant in WWII-era Los Angeles is brutalized and driven insane by American racial politics. The prose is strong, though not as strong as it would get in his later books, and he still has the sharp eye for injustice and hypocrisy, as he demonstrates throughout the Harlem detective series, but the plot, such as it is, is kind of….loose? Predictable? Ultimately I think his ‘genre’ stuff is stronger, not so much because of the genre angles specifically but more because of the sense of place which is so abundantly vivid in his Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones stuff, but somewhat less thick on the ground here. Library, probably I’d drop it not cause it’s bad but because on my theoretical book shelf I already have like, 8 Chester Himes books and I could probably do w/out a 9th.

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

My god, was this a journey. I really didn’t think I would come to love this novel as much as I did but here we are. "If he hollers let him go" is a exploration of black identity and the psychological responses to white supremacy and its aftermath. Our protagonist Ben is slowly driven to madness by the cruelty of racism and unfairness it intails. He struggles accepting that no matter how hard he is trying, he will never be an equal to white people.
There is so so much that I can’t get into here but two elements were extremely outstanding:
- Ben’s on/off girlfriend is a black bisexual women and I love how the author created April not stereotypical queer to demonize her but rather to show how enigmatic she is. She is not only smart and beautiful, she is also queer!! (And that for a novel written in the 40s!)
- Ben‘s dreams were a sad but well done representation on foreshadowing. I haven’t seen this in a long time so that was nice. He also used his dreams to tell the reader how far his anxiety and panic had progressed until it all ended when he went to the army.

[Deb Grove · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very disturbing story about an African-American man who works in a shipyard after WWII. We see his dreams and passions but also how he is subjected to overt racism and discrimination and his anger. Although the book was written over 70 years ago, the themes are very timely. It is inexcusable that the same problems are still here today.

[Eleanor Love · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel has been robbed of its credit; Himes’ narration of 1940s LA through Bob’s eyes is harrowing and real. Students should be reading this, not To Kill a Mockingbird.

[mia albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

a racialized, emotional story about the black experience during WWII. fast paced and powerful, i enjoyed this somewhat nihilistic book