Transgressing Race and Community in ChesterHimes's If He Hollers Let Him Go

Du ring World War II, Chester Himes was one of more than70,000 African Americans who moved to Los Angeles and

one of the many transcontinental migrants who would double theexisting black population in southern California (Sides 252).Much Iike Bob jones, the semi-autobiographical main character ofhis first published novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Himeshoped to benefit from relaxed racial restrictions on hiring due tothe massive labor shortage in the defense plants. In his 1971 au to­biography TIre Quality of Hurt: The Early Years, Himes accounts forhis four years in Los Angeles in a scant three pages. He details hispersonal "hurts," including his his tory of tough breaks, roughchildhood, underworld existence, and a seven-and-one-half-yearsentence served in an Ohio prison, and desc ribes how theseevents are transformed into racia l anguish:

los Angeles hurt me racially as much as any city I have ever known­much more than any city I remembe r from the South . 11 was the lyinghypocrisy that hurt me. Black people were treated much the same asthey were in an industrial city of the South. They were Jim-Crowed inhousing. in employment, in public accommodations, such as hotels andrestaurants. . .. The diffe rence was that the white peo ple of los Angelesseem ed to be saying, "N igger, ain't we good to you?" (73-74) 1

In response to this hyp ocrisy, Him es dep icts himself as un able toreconcile the crue l con tradictions of Cali forn ian dreams and theState's racism, the econo mic promise that masks dee ply roo tedracial vio lence and hatred. Similarly, Himes's character Bobbecomes enmeshed in and almos t paralyzed by the racia l cond i­tions caused by wartime hysteria and nativism agains t the enemynation of japan.2

The historical context of wartime Los Angeles is crucia l tounderstandi ng the novel.3 Bob details h is experiences both in itssegregated neighborhoods and in his encou nters with the grow ­ing local African American community that is find ing increasingpolitical and economic opportunities in the wartime boom econo­my. Historians are beginning to analyze the labor organizing andracial consciousness in the 1940s in order to trace the roo ts of theCivil Rights and Third World Movements of the 1950s and196Os.4 From this developing his torica l tradition, scholars areexamining the unique "black p'opular front" emerging in LosAngeles during World War IJ.O With these developments, it isimportant to reassess Himes's literary and historical achievementin ~f He Hollers Let Him Goand examine his fictional response tothe events of the early 1940s-the japanese American internmentand the Zoot Suit Riots-and their relat ionshi p to the AfricanAmerican community.f This reassessment also correla tes to whatliterary scholars have begun to isolate abou t the "Los Angelesnovel" in terms of noir, detective. and science fiction? Because ofits spatial evocation of minority communities and historicalracism particular to Los Angeles itself, Himes's novel merits sub-

African American Re view, Volume 37. Number 1C 2003 Lynn M. lIagaki

Lynn M. Itaga kl is a doc­toral candidate in English atthe University of California.los Angeles. Hercurrent pro­jectsexamine the intersectionof law, literature. and the 1992Los Angeles Uprising. Fortheir insightful disOJSSions ofthis paper, she would like tothank Debra Bronstein, E.Tsekani Browne. June Chung,James V. Gatewood. lisa M.ltagaki, JinQiling, AnneMellor, ValerieSmith, TerrySmith, Kathryn Stelmach. andthepartidpantsin theDiversitywithinUnity2 confer­ence at Oxford University.

65

80

Dower, John. War Without Mercy : Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York : Pantheon, 1986.Fine, David, ed . Los Angeles in Fiction : A Collection of Original Essays, Albuq uerque: U of New

Mexico P, 1984 ,-, ed. Los Angeles in Fiction : A Collection of Essays . Rev. ed . Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P,

1995.Foucault, MIchel. Disciplin9 and Punish: The Birth of the Prison . Trans . Alan Sheridan. New York:

Vintage. 1977.- . "Preface to Transgression." Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and

Interviews. Ed . and Trans. Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.29-52.Higgi nbotham, Evelyn Brooks. "African-American Wome n's History and the Metalanguage of Race ."

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 17.2 (1992): 251-74.Himes, Chester. If He Hollers Let Him Go. 1945. Foreward by Graham Hodges. New York: Thunder's

Mou th P, 1986.- . The Quality of Hurt: The Early Years-The Autobiography of Chester Himes . 1971. New York:

Paragon House, 1972 .- . "Zoot Riots are Race Riots ." Black on Black: Baby Sister and Selected Writings . Garden City ,

New York: Doubleday, 1973.220-25.Johnson , James Weldon . "Lynching-America's National Disgrace." 1924. The Selected Writings of

James Weldon Johnson: Vol. II-Social, Political, and Literary Essays . Ed. Sondra Kathryn Wilson.New York: Oxford UP, 1995. 71-78 .

Kelley, Robin D. G. "The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics During WorldWar II: Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class. 1994. New York: Free P,1996. 161-81.

Klein, Norm an. The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the erasure of Memory. London: Verso,1997.

Kurashige, Scott Tadao. "Transforming Los Angeles: Black and Japanese American Struggles forRacial Equality in the 20th Century." Diss . UCLA, 2000.

"Little Tokio's Jumpi n' Now. " Negro Digest 1.12 (1943): 97-98 .Lips itz, Geo rge . Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1994.Margolies, Edward . Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors.

Philadelphia: Lippin cott, 1968.- , and Michel Fabre . The Several Uves of Chester Himes . Jackson: UP of Mississippi , 1997 .Moss, Rick. "Not Quite Paradise : The Development of the African American Commu nity in Los

Ange les Through 1950." California History 75.3 (1996): 222-35 .Rodgers, Lawrence R. Canaan Bound: The African -American Great Migration Novel. Urbana: U of

Illinois P, 1997.Roosevelt, Eleanor . "The Four Equali ties." Negro Digest 1.1I (1943 ): 81-83.-. "Freedom: Promise or Factr Negro Digest 1.12 (1943): 8-9.Sa llis, James. Chester Himes: A Ute. New York : Walker, 2000 .Sanchez. George. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los

Angeles, 1900-1945. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.Scruggs, Charles. Sweet Home: Invisible Cities in the Afro-American Novel. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins UP, 1993.Sides, Josh . "Battle on the Home Front: African American Shipyard Workers in World War II Los

Angeles." California History 75.3 (1996): 250-63.Skinne r, Robert E. "Streets of Fear: The Los Angeles Novel s of Cheste r Himes ." Fine , rev. ed . 228­

38.Soja , Edward W. "Los Angeles , 1965--1992: From Crisis-Generated Restructu ring to Restructuring­

Genera ted Crisis." The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century .Ed. Al len J. Scott and Soja . Berkeley: U of California P, 1996. 426-62.

Swift, John N. "Chester Himes, the Fiction of Exclusion , and Los Angeles' Other Geography ofDesire." Writers of the Historic Wilshire Corridor. Los Angeles: Califo rnia Council for theHuma nities, City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Departm ent, n.d.

Wrigh t, Richard. 12 Million Black Voices. Photo direction by Edwin Rosskam. 1941. New York:Thunder's Mouth P, 1992.

Yoko ta , Karian n Ake mi. "From Little Tokyo to Bronze ville and Back: Ethnic Communities inTran sitlon," Thesis UCLA, 1996.

Yoo, David. GroWing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans ofCalifornia, 1924-49. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2000.

AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW