SOURCE: "The Chester Himes Mystique," in African American Review, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1992, pp. 521-23.

In the following review, Roget asserts that "Chester Himes's autobiography offers invaluable literary witness to the multifaceted black experience in America and abroad."

Chester Himes's decision to write his autobiography was prompted by a number of exigencies, among them the need for self-validation, the need for self-knowledge and the need for self-liberation. The untimely death of his lifelong friend Richard Wright in 1960 caused Himes to become preoccupied with his own mortality. After suffering strokes in 1963 and 1964, he felt impelled to get his life on record, before it was too late. Exhibiting immense candor as well as courage, Himes, in his two-volume autobiography The Quality of Hurt and My Life of Absurdity, reviews the events of his life within the socio-cultural context of his time. He uses his autobiography to chronicle the hurt that he suffered...