The Autobiography of Chester Himes (Masterplots II: African American Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Chester Himes
- First Published: 1972
- Type of Work: Autobiography
- Time of Work: 1909–1976
- Setting: The United States and Europe
- Principal Characters: Chester Himes, Estelle Charlotte Bomar Himes, Jean Johnson Himes, Richard Wright, Marlene Behrens, Lesley Packard Himes
- Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography
- Subjects: African Americans, Family or family life, Suffering, Mothers, Parents and children, Prisons, Racism, Twentieth century, Authors or writers, Blindness or blind persons, Exile or expatriates, Interracial relationships, Literature, Middle classes
- Locales: Europe, United States
Form and Content
Chester Himes’s autobiographies are at once a record of his life as a black, radical, expatriate writer and a social document disclosing the sufferings of African Americans throughout most of the twentieth century. His life story is central to a study of African American literature, because it explores the pain inflicted upon Himes, pain he was able to convert into powerful literature; because it dramatizes the problems an African American artist, especially a political radical such as Himes, must face in the white publishing world; and because it exposes the...
[The entire page is 3034 words long]
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