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Yesterday Will Make You Cry

A Novel

Author Chester Himes

Paperback

$19.00 US

Knopf | Vintage

5-3/16"W x 8"H | 11 oz | 24 per carton

On sale Mar 18, 2025 | 400 Pages | 9780593686669

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From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a masterful autobiographical novel about the injustices of the prison system and the humanity that flourishes despite it

Jimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery. Terror and chaos reign in the prison, where corrupt, racist guards mete out capricious punishments like time in “the hole,” where inmates’ sense of reality slips away in total darkness. When a fire breaks out amid these mounting indignities, it unleashes a deadly mayhem that leaves Jimmy feeling as though his entire world is disintegrating. But in its aftermath, he kindles a tender relationship with a fellow convict named Rico and finally catches a glimmer of hope.

Searing, exquisitely vivid, and ultimately affirming, Yesterday Will Make You Cry is a masterful autobiographical novel about the injustices of the prison system and the humanity that flourishes despite them.

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

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Praise for Chester Himes's Yesterday Will Make You Cry

“The book’s strengths lie in Himes’s unflinching ability to stare down terrible truths and his finely details portrayal of men in conditions of great adversity. . . . the novel’s emotional core continues to smolder. Rage tempered with compassion is the backbone of this story—and what makes it eminently worth reading.”
—The New York Times

“An illuminating sociological portrait of prison life—certainly one of the best available in fictional form—and adds another intriguing installment to Himes's fascinating oeuvre.”
—Washington Post

“[Yesterday Will Make You Cry] is, most beautifully, a love story. . . . What a gift this is to American literature.”
—Buffalo News

“Deeply engrossing. . . [A] clear-eyed tale about the brutality, physical and psychological, of prison life witha sensibility that turns agony into th epoetry of pain and loss.”
—Dallas Morning News

“[A] unique work and a fascinating one. . . . Himes has long deserved a serious reassessment, and this is a fine place to start.”
—Boston Globe

“There could not be a fitter time or place for the publication of this great prison novel than today's United States.”
—The Nation

“A textbook performance in whic hall of HImes's gifts come into play: the colorful characters, the ability to create a blunt reality without sacrificing an elegant style, and the trenchant commentary about blacks living in a society that is hostile ot them.”
—Ishmael Reed

“Both a superior novel and a moving fictional record of the perseverance of humanity amidst unrelenting degradation.”
—Publishers Weekly

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