If He Hollers Let Him Go
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
|
| Author | Chester Himes |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Literary fiction |
| Publisher | Thunder's Mouth Press reprint |
| Released | 1945 |
| Media Type | |
| Pages | 216 |
| ISBN | ISBN 1-56025-445-9 |
If He Hollers Let Him Go is a novel by Chester Himes, published in 1945, about an African American shipyard worker in Los Angeles during World War II. A 1968 film adaptation with Raymond St. Jacques, Barbara McNair, Kevin McCarthy, and Arthur O'Connell bore little resemblance to the book.
The story spans four days in the life of Bob Jones, a newcomer to L.A. from Ohio, who has some college education, and works as a crew leader in a naval shipyard. Jones lives in a time when black workers experience a new-found authority as supervisors and garner decent wages as a result of union efforts. However for Bob Jones this is no escape from the pressures of racism. It quickly becomes apparent that he was promoted only in order to facilitate the cooperation of black workers in the war-time effort. He is forced to deal with anti-communist paranoia, resentment from whites on the floor at working on the same jobs as "negro boys", and the vicious baiting of the black workers by white females. These manifest as fears which invade his dreams, his tiniest aspirations, and his deepest passions. His dream of making something of himself in California is jeopardized as he reacts with pure emotion to the actions of the white people around him. He fights back the urges to fight, to kill, and to rape as ways to overcome the power that "colour" has over him. He can never forget who he is or what he is prevented from being to spite his hopes that in California he might start fresh and begin a new life. At the same time, Jones comes across as an empowered individual and not as a hapless, helpless victim. For all that he is confronted with, he never stops planning and acting and moving, and in the end, he survives.
Themes addressed in the novel include black and white racism, color differentiation among African-Americans, discrimination on the job, and class divisions among whites and blacks. Communism is dealt with generously, as the Communist unionists ("agitators") are the only ones who talk about the issue of race in any way with which the protagonist agrees. There is some reference to jazz.
