From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a powerful autobiographical novel about a black family tortured by colorism as it strives to live up to the myth of the Black middle class in white, post-war America
Lillian Taylor is obsessed with middle-class respectability. Despite the fact that her parents were enslaved, she is possessed by the delusion that her ancestors were white. But she's married to a dark-skinned man and ridicules him mercilessly for his complexion. After one bitter incident sullies Mr. Taylor’s reputation, he is forced to resign his job at a small Black college in Missouri and move his family elsewhere—the first of several relocations that strain things further.
Caught in the middle of this dysfunction is Charles, the youngest of three boys, who is left alone with their scornful mother after his brothers manage to escape. As their situation becomes ever more precarious, Charles becomes the focus of his mother’s domineering attention, resulting in an inability to fit into either black or white society. When Charles succumbs to a self-ruin borne of this struggle, it embodies the tragic failures of his fractured family.
Drawn from Himes’s own childhood and adolescence, The Third Generation is a devastating look into the ghastly effects of internalized racism and the rage that erupts from America’s failed promises.
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 powerful autobiographical novel about a black family tortured by colorism as it strives to live up to the myth of the Black middle class in white, post-war America
Lillian Taylor is obsessed with middle-class respectability. Despite the fact that her parents were enslaved, she is possessed by the delusion that her ancestors were white. But she's married to a dark-skinned man and ridicules him mercilessly for his complexion. After one bitter incident sullies Mr. Taylor’s reputation, he is forced to resign his job at a small Black college in Missouri and move his family elsewhere—the first of several relocations that strain things further.
Caught in the middle of this dysfunction is Charles, the youngest of three boys, who is left alone with their scornful mother after his brothers manage to escape. As their situation becomes ever more precarious, Charles becomes the focus of his mother’s domineering attention, resulting in an inability to fit into either black or white society. When Charles succumbs to a self-ruin borne of this struggle, it embodies the tragic failures of his fractured family.
Drawn from Himes’s own childhood and adolescence, The Third Generation is a devastating look into the ghastly effects of internalized racism and the rage that erupts from America’s failed promises.
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
