SOURCE: Bell, Bernard. “Conversations with Chester Himes.” African American Review 32, no. 2 (summer 1998): 351-55.

In the following review, Bell discusses subjects such as Himes's views on violence in American culture and the exploitation of the African American writer.

“American male writers don't produce manly books,” John A. Williams wrote after reading the manuscript of the first volume of Chester Himes's autobiography, The Quality of Hurt (1972); “Himes' autobiography is that of a man.” This provocative comment on Himes the man and writer appears in the introduction to Williams's “My Man Himes: An Interview with Chester Himes,” the most illuminating and important of the eighteen “interviews” in Michel Fabre's and Robert E. Skinner's Conversations with Chester Himes. The most frequently recurring themes in these interviews and paraphrased, journalistic conversations that range chronologically from 1955 to 1985 are the deep-rooted violence of American culture; the absurdity of American racism; the schizophrenic, sensual lives of...