Universality at War: Race, Nation, and Communism in Chester Himes's "If He Hollers Let Him Go"

This essay shows how Chester Himes’s first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), centrally engages with and contests two universalisms manifest in World War II-era Los Angeles: that of militarized US nationalism and that of procommunist organized labor. By emphasizing the irony of his protagonist’...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:African American review 2015-03, Vol.48 (1/2), p.157-173
Main Author: Darda, Joseph
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
Communism
Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895)
Himes, Chester
Logic
Marx, Karl (1818-1883)
Nationalism
Novels
Political parties
Politics
Race
Silence
Social justice
Utopias
War
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Summary:This essay shows how Chester Himes’s first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), centrally engages with and contests two universalisms manifest in World War II-era Los Angeles: that of militarized US nationalism and that of procommunist organized labor. By emphasizing the irony of his protagonist’s nationalist and working-class identities, Himes points to the limits of these universalisms, the disparity between their claims and their lived realities, and instead gestures to emergent multiracial coalitions that look beyond the horizon of the nation to imagine counterhegemonic forms of social justice.
ISSN:1062-4783
1945-6182
1945-6182
DOI:10.1353/afa.2015.0014