Scan barcode
alliepeduto's review against another edition
2.0
DNF...this was definitely not my style, I only made it about 30 pages into the book. I’ve heard nothing but great things about this author though, and he is undeniably a great writer, I just couldn’t get into the story. Even though I am tabling this book, I might try another of his works at some point since he is an iconic voice of the genre.
kurtwombat's review against another edition
5.0
With the creation of his big city black detectives, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, Chester Himes achieved something singular and grand. Hard boiled genre fiction was nothing new in the 1950’s, but populating a landscape with sharply detailed black characters was new and still reads fresh today half a century later. The detectives work for a police department mostly at odds with the community they serve and serve a community distrustful of the department that they work for. Often this puts them in a vice, but also it frees them to make up their own rules. Adhering to a clear vision of right and wrong, like most hard boiled detectives, their means can swerve wildly from what would seem acceptable. Their creativity in the face of constant adversity propels the novel. The richly created world of Pimps, Madams, hustlers, grifters and work-a-day going to church every Sunday folk gives the novel a pulse and lively step. Himes achieved his stated goal of doing for Harlem what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles. I almost felt like I knew where all the alleys were in Harlem by the end of the book. The heist at the center of the novel is a solid mystery that snakes through every corner of Harlem and squeezes out a fresh look at race relations on several social levels. The voices and language of COTTON COMES TO HARLEM still rings in my ears—always colorful but never overdone.
dylan2219's review against another edition
dark
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
delton215's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
tonimarshall84's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
zforzo's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Twas’ a lot and maybe not a good a lot. Interesting representation of black women in particular, not in a great way for the most part. Also I personally didn’t understand something’s cuz of the slang difference but I can’t hold that against himes, just a product of time. What I can hold against him is all the side quests that I didn’t necessarily care about, but maybe that’s the point. The two cops are also contradicting themselves half the time but whatever LMAO also probably intentional? Ending was funny tho. I like it. Overall though, even tho you might be able to justify much of Himes choices, was just not my cup of tea.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Sexism
Moderate: Sexual content
jonmhansen's review against another edition
4.0
I wonder if the Unknown Comic from the Gong Show ever read this book? Because this takes that act in a whole different direction.
As an aside: although I had heard of Marcus Garvey, I didn't know why I would have (you know, you hear a name in passing with no explanation as to what they're famous for). Nice to have that filled in.
As an aside: although I had heard of Marcus Garvey, I didn't know why I would have (you know, you hear a name in passing with no explanation as to what they're famous for). Nice to have that filled in.
tessaherrmann13's review against another edition
2.0
I thought that this was a fun book. Himes definitely had a unique writing style that grew on me throughout the book.
emmaisfast's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
grubstlodger's review against another edition
3.0
Consciously, I picked Cotton Comes to Harlem because I was in the mood for something pacy and exciting, sub-consciously I may have been nudged into reading it because of all the discussion of race on the news at the moment. It certainly taught me one thing.
The first chapter of this book is very striking. In this chapter, a group of people gather for a Back to Africa fundraiser which a barbecue. Armed robbers crash this event, kill a man and rush off with over eighty-thousand dollars of funds. However, that’s not how it’s described. The event is a black event, taking place in black Harlem where black people listen to a Back to Africa event. These black people smile with white teeth as they eat white pork cooked on a black barbecue. The people at the event are black. They are black people. The speaker is black. The listeners are black. There are some coloured cops keeping an eye on things, especially on the black crowd. White robbers in a white van drive through the black people at the black event. They steal the white bags of green money from the black people. These white people wave black guns with black holes of death. The black people at the black event scream, so their white teeth show in their black faces as they try to run away from the white van - and so on.
Now, part of me loved all the repetitions of white and black things, it reminds me of the Ian Dury song Sweet Gene Vincent, which makes similar use of the staccato rhythms of contrasting white and black. Yet I also found it irritating, I knew the crowd were black, I was told every few sentences. Indeed, nobody in this book is simply a person, they are are different hues and types of people. There are black, coloured, yellow, hispanic, puerto rican, white and many other types of people - but all must be defined. Even if we already know what ‘type’ of person we are dealing with, we have to be reminded every time we see them, multiple times a page. Why can’t they just be people? I wondered. Why is it so important that Chester Himes must foreground each individual character’s skin tone repeatedly in the book? Well, because it’s important to him. As a white guy in a European country, I have the luxury of not having to worry about where each person falls on a pantone colour chart. Himes, and the characters in the world he creates, do not have that luxury - skin tone determines every human interaction.
Another choice that struck me as odd, is that the word ‘fuck’ is obviously not welcome by the publishers when this book came out. There is the Irish replacement ‘feck’ used at one point, but almost every character’s swear word of choice is a replacement for ‘motherfucker’. The strange thing is that the replacement in ‘mother-raper’, which is a phrase that, in avoiding the word ‘fuck’, uses the infinitely more disturbing ‘rape’. I can’t recall any other instance where a euphemism is worse than the word it’s replacing.
As for the story, it’s a wonderfully aggressive ride with the most wonderfully named investigators outside of Monsieur Pamplemousse - namely Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. The nicknames of both these characters express their reputation for killing off bad people rather than arresting them. In this time of Black Lives Matter, sparked off by police violence against a black man, it was a little disconcerting to read a book where police violence is regarded both right and funny. The two men are considered the ace cops on the Harlem beat, the very best, though they barely put two clues together and frequently lose whoever they’re tailing. Their skill is local knowledge and violence. At one point where they stop a race riot by deterring a march, a feat they achieve by skimming bullets along a line and daring the march to cross - which they don’t. I’ve not seen the film based on this book but I’ve seen enough Rudy Ray Moore films to get a feeling for it (still need to see that biopic).
The mystery itself was not difficult to solve but it was both fun and satisfying and I’ll be happy to pick up a Chester Himes again.
Finally, food is a big part of the texture of the world. A lot of it pretty unknown to me but some of it hugely appetising indeed. I mainly bring it up so because I thought ‘Little Sister’s Big Brother’ is the best name for a hot sauce ever.
The first chapter of this book is very striking. In this chapter, a group of people gather for a Back to Africa fundraiser which a barbecue. Armed robbers crash this event, kill a man and rush off with over eighty-thousand dollars of funds. However, that’s not how it’s described. The event is a black event, taking place in black Harlem where black people listen to a Back to Africa event. These black people smile with white teeth as they eat white pork cooked on a black barbecue. The people at the event are black. They are black people. The speaker is black. The listeners are black. There are some coloured cops keeping an eye on things, especially on the black crowd. White robbers in a white van drive through the black people at the black event. They steal the white bags of green money from the black people. These white people wave black guns with black holes of death. The black people at the black event scream, so their white teeth show in their black faces as they try to run away from the white van - and so on.
Now, part of me loved all the repetitions of white and black things, it reminds me of the Ian Dury song Sweet Gene Vincent, which makes similar use of the staccato rhythms of contrasting white and black. Yet I also found it irritating, I knew the crowd were black, I was told every few sentences. Indeed, nobody in this book is simply a person, they are are different hues and types of people. There are black, coloured, yellow, hispanic, puerto rican, white and many other types of people - but all must be defined. Even if we already know what ‘type’ of person we are dealing with, we have to be reminded every time we see them, multiple times a page. Why can’t they just be people? I wondered. Why is it so important that Chester Himes must foreground each individual character’s skin tone repeatedly in the book? Well, because it’s important to him. As a white guy in a European country, I have the luxury of not having to worry about where each person falls on a pantone colour chart. Himes, and the characters in the world he creates, do not have that luxury - skin tone determines every human interaction.
Another choice that struck me as odd, is that the word ‘fuck’ is obviously not welcome by the publishers when this book came out. There is the Irish replacement ‘feck’ used at one point, but almost every character’s swear word of choice is a replacement for ‘motherfucker’. The strange thing is that the replacement in ‘mother-raper’, which is a phrase that, in avoiding the word ‘fuck’, uses the infinitely more disturbing ‘rape’. I can’t recall any other instance where a euphemism is worse than the word it’s replacing.
As for the story, it’s a wonderfully aggressive ride with the most wonderfully named investigators outside of Monsieur Pamplemousse - namely Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. The nicknames of both these characters express their reputation for killing off bad people rather than arresting them. In this time of Black Lives Matter, sparked off by police violence against a black man, it was a little disconcerting to read a book where police violence is regarded both right and funny. The two men are considered the ace cops on the Harlem beat, the very best, though they barely put two clues together and frequently lose whoever they’re tailing. Their skill is local knowledge and violence. At one point where they stop a race riot by deterring a march, a feat they achieve by skimming bullets along a line and daring the march to cross - which they don’t. I’ve not seen the film based on this book but I’ve seen enough Rudy Ray Moore films to get a feeling for it (still need to see that biopic).
The mystery itself was not difficult to solve but it was both fun and satisfying and I’ll be happy to pick up a Chester Himes again.
Finally, food is a big part of the texture of the world. A lot of it pretty unknown to me but some of it hugely appetising indeed. I mainly bring it up so because I thought ‘Little Sister’s Big Brother’ is the best name for a hot sauce ever.