From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a masterful autobiographical novel about the injustices of the prison system and the humanity that flourishes despite it—in gay love, emotional maturation, and redemption
Nineteen-year-old Jimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery. A thrill-seeking white teenager from Mississippi who was thrown out of school more than once, he is able to pay for college with a nice settlement from a workplace accident. But before too long, he’s kicked out again, and embarks on a rough and tumble life that lands him in the state penitentiary, where life is monotonous, violent, and cruel.
The penitentiary is a place where terror and chaos reign, where corrupt guards inflict casual and insidious violence, where men wholly isolated from the outside world must preserve their dignity and find fulfillment through years of boredom and uncertainty. The psychological effects are devastating, and when a fire breaks out that unleashes a deadly mayhem, it seems as though Jimmy’s entire world is unraveling. When he later develops a tender and passionate relationship with fellow convict Rico, hope begins to glimmer, and his eventual foray into writing channels the confusion of his experience into something finally resembling redemption.
Unsettlingly vivid but also resonant and affirming, Yesterday Will Make You Cry is drawn from Chester Himes’s own life and demonstrates the impressive range of literary powers possessed by this underappreciated master.
Chester (Bomar) Himes began his writing career while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery from 1929 - 1936. His account of the horrific 1930 Penitentiary fire that killed over three hundred men appeared in Esquire in 1932 and from this Himes was able to get other work published. From his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Himes dealt with the social and psychological repercussions of being black in a white-dominated society. Beginning in 1953, Himes moved to Europe, where he lived as an expatriate in France and Spain. There, he met and was strongly influenced by Richard Wright. It was in France that he began his best-known series of crime novels---including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) and Run Man Run (1966)---featuring two Harlem policemen Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. As with Himes's earlier work, the series is characterized by violence and grisly, sardonic humor.
View titles by Chester Himes
From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a masterful autobiographical novel about the injustices of the prison system and the humanity that flourishes despite it—in gay love, emotional maturation, and redemption
Nineteen-year-old Jimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery. A thrill-seeking white teenager from Mississippi who was thrown out of school more than once, he is able to pay for college with a nice settlement from a workplace accident. But before too long, he’s kicked out again, and embarks on a rough and tumble life that lands him in the state penitentiary, where life is monotonous, violent, and cruel.
The penitentiary is a place where terror and chaos reign, where corrupt guards inflict casual and insidious violence, where men wholly isolated from the outside world must preserve their dignity and find fulfillment through years of boredom and uncertainty. The psychological effects are devastating, and when a fire breaks out that unleashes a deadly mayhem, it seems as though Jimmy’s entire world is unraveling. When he later develops a tender and passionate relationship with fellow convict Rico, hope begins to glimmer, and his eventual foray into writing channels the confusion of his experience into something finally resembling redemption.
Unsettlingly vivid but also resonant and affirming, Yesterday Will Make You Cry is drawn from Chester Himes’s own life and demonstrates the impressive range of literary powers possessed by this underappreciated master.
Chester (Bomar) Himes began his writing career while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery from 1929 - 1936. His account of the horrific 1930 Penitentiary fire that killed over three hundred men appeared in Esquire in 1932 and from this Himes was able to get other work published. From his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Himes dealt with the social and psychological repercussions of being black in a white-dominated society. Beginning in 1953, Himes moved to Europe, where he lived as an expatriate in France and Spain. There, he met and was strongly influenced by Richard Wright. It was in France that he began his best-known series of crime novels---including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) and Run Man Run (1966)---featuring two Harlem policemen Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. As with Himes's earlier work, the series is characterized by violence and grisly, sardonic humor.
View titles by Chester Himes
