Love Jones: a black male feminist critique of Chester Himes's If He Hollers Let Him Go.

In his insightful essay "A Black Man's Place(s) in Black Feminist Criticism," Michael Awkward asks an important question: "Can black men like himself--those who are deeply invested in resisting patriarchal power, and for whom black women's lives, art, and literature have been crucial to their own intellectual, emotional, and spiritual development--do black feminist criticism?" Responding to the womanist criticism of Alice Walker and Sherley Anne Williams and the psychoanalytical approach of Hortense Spillers, Awkward answers the question by emphasizing the role of black men in analyzing the "practices of patriarchy that have already divided us" (15). He concentrates on the ways that black men's criticism of black women's texts can enhance the study of black women's literature. For this criticism to be productive, Awkward argues, black men must eschew "traditional patriarchal desires for control and erasure of the 'female,'" and perform "sophisticated, informed, and contentious critiques of phallocentric pract ices ... in an effort to redefine our notions of black male (and female) textuality and subjectivity" (21).

Awkward furnishes a useful methodology for aspiring black male feminists. Preoccupied, however, with "legitimizing" black men who critique black female texts, he does not adequately emphasize the potential role of black male feminists who engage black male texts. In this essay, I extend Awkward's theoretical project to provide a black male feminist critique of Chester Himes's If He Hollers Let Him Go. To date, Himes's crucial text has not received a serious black feminist critique of any kind. My black male feminist reading of If He Hollers interrogates Himes's rendering of women--black and white--as proponents of black male social emasculation. Focusing attention on the marginalized perspectives of the black women in the text, I reconsider the received image of Bob Jones, the central protagonist, as a "Black Everyman." Illuminating Himes's phallocentric assumptions regarding black women, this perspective calls attention to the erasure of the black female social perspectives in the novel. To redress this era sure, I consider Ella Mae's criticism of Bob Jones's relationship with Madge, and her compelling critique of his black masculine crisis. Such consideration sheds new light on the gendered politics of Jones's perspective. It becomes evident, for example, that Jones's understanding of his socioeconomic oppression is linked to his frustration at not being able fully to sexually dominate black and white women. As such, his project of black resistance to white racism is gendered in ways that reify rather than subvert white patriarchy.

Literary critics of If He Hollers, most of them black and male, typically characterize Bob Jones as a socially conscious Bigger Thomas. Most critics view Jones as the victim, not only of white racism but also of social emasculation at the hands of the black bourgeois and, more specifically, black and white women. From this perspective, Jones's peculiar socioeconomic circumstance demands he choose the lesser of two evils: Either he marries his wealthy, self-absorbed, near-white fiancee Alice and accepts the "limitations" of his race, or he "rapes" Madge, a racially antagonizing white woman, to challenge white supremacy at the risk of death. For example, Gilbert Muller portrays Bob Jones as "trapped in a menacing triangle involving Alice, who would domesticate him, and Madge, who would have him lynched" (27). Jones's personal freedom, writes Muller, is limited by his socioeconomic position: "Ironically Bob Jones, a middle-class intellectual, has been trapped by American culture as powerfully as the uneducated Bigger Thomas was in Native Son. In both novels, the configuration of race, class, caste, and gender conspire to render the protagonist in postures of guilt" (27; my italics).

Like Muller, Stephen Milliken argues that Alice and Madge are the chief antagonists in Bob Jones's struggle for equality. Milliken asserts that "two women, one black and beautiful and the other white and vicious, are the principal barbed spurs that drive Bob Jones from point to point through his short and violent trajectory, as he is jabbed at or slashed first by one set of characters and then another" (77). Milliken characterizes Jones as a "kind of modem day Everyman" who refuses "every infringement on his full humanity, however 'little' the Alices of the world may consider him" (6). Jones's rebellious nature is deemed "manly," and his fate drawn as uncontrollable and tragic.

Echoing the image of Jones as a "modem day Everyman," Addison Gayle, Jr., argues that If He Hollers is "concerned with the powerlessness of the black-middle class intellectual" (182). Himes extends Richard Wright's social commentary, argues Gayle, to include a critique of class consciousness in the black community. Commending Himes for his staunch critique of black middle-class accommodationism, Gayle asserts that "American tyranny and oppression have been directed not only at Blacks of little education or financial standing, not only at the Bigger Thomases, but at the Bob Joneses as well. It is this lesson that the black middle class and their spokesmen, novelists, and critics have been unwilling to learn" (184-85). Gayle's only criticism of Jones, presented in revealing sexual language, is that he accepts the "right of society to castrate him" because he adheres to some "superficial values, as readily, though not as completely, as the Harrisons" (185):

These critical approaches fail to engage several issues that should be crucial to black male feminist criticism. To date, no critic has given adequate attention to the female voices in the text. As a result, none fully comprehends the degree to which Bob Jones is implicated in the white supremacist forces against which he ostensibly rebels. Paying attention to the women casts serious doubts on the consensus reading of Bob Jones as a "Black Everyman." Milliken, for example, (mis)represents the action of the novel when he explains Bob Jones's pursuit of Madge at her apartment as a kneejerk reaction to discovering that Alice is out with her white male colleague, Tom Leighton. Milliken ignores Jones's first unsuccessful trip to Madge's apartment. In fact, the only reason Alice is with Tom in the first place is because Jones has canceled their original plans so that he can pursue his sexual conquest of Madge. Typical of the ideological "blind spot" informing most criticism of If He Hollers, Milliken's analysis de monstrates the pressing need for a black male feminist critique.

In their highly regarded biography The Several Lives of Chester Himes, Michel Fabre and Edward Margolies reveal that Himes's own misogynistic attitudes informed his rendering of women. If He Hollers, they note, was modeled in large part around Himes's own personal experiences in wartime Los Angeles. Himes openly resented the fact that his first wife, Jean, like the character Alice in the novel, flourished socially and economically in Los Angeles, while Himes, like Bob Jones, struggled to attain socioeconomic respectability. Clearly, some understanding of Chester Himes's personal experiences and attitudes casts light on the tensions portrayed in If He Hollers. However, Bob Jones does not merely ventrioquize the personal racial/sexual politics of Chester Himes. Rather he brings into focus the anxieties about black masculinity shared by many black men of the World War II era and the subsequent Black Nationalist era of the 1960s and 1970s.

The crucial question that emerges is: Where does Bob Jones end and Chester Himes begin? I navigate this tricky terrain by first delineating the black masculine politics of Bob Jones, and then considering Himes's rendering of Jones's relationship with black women. This casts light on the way class informs Jones's view of black women. While Jones should not be confused with Himes in any simplistic way, the unresolved aspects of the author's thought emerge most clearly in scenes involving Jones's interaction with black women. Therefore, an interrogation of Jones's subject position, of his investment in black masculinist discourse, reveals tensions between Himes's conscious perspective and the implications of his text.

In the opening scene of if He Hollers, Jones repudiates Ella Mae, his renter and ex-lover, for infantilizing his sexuality by providing him sexual favors out of social pity. He deems "simpleminded, generous," and "sympathetic," like the black working-class theatergoers in Lincoln who extend pity for a blind white acrobat rather than reserving it for themselves. Jones argues that " ... the worse white folks treat us the more we love 'em. Ella Mae laying me because I wasn't married and she figured she had enough for me and Henry too; and a black audience clapping its hands off for a blind white acrobat" (6). The connection Jones makes between the black audience clapping for the blind white acrobat and Ella Mae having sex with him out of pity is strikingly incongruent. While it is clear that Jones's quarrel with the black working class stems from what he perceives as their willful participation in their own subjugation, it is unclear how his interpretation of their complicity is equivalent to his relationship wi th Ella Mae. Why, for instance, should Ella reserve her pity for herself rather than Jones? Aren't they both black and working class? How, then, does the significance of race, which is clearly the focal point of his blind-white-acrobat analogy, figure into his relationship with Ella Mae?

The link Jones makes between the two situations can best be explained as Himes's attempt to situate Ella Mae's sociopolitical misconduct beside the more clearly drawn, self-effacing behavior of the black audience. Himes's equivocal comparison of Ella Mae to the black audience at Lincoln reveals the complications, if not contradictions, of his rendering of her relationship with Jones. The reader is clearly encouraged to empathize with Jones, and view Ella Mae as at once an unwitting participant in her own subjugation and a conscious conspirator in Jones's emasculation. Ella Mae's "offense" against Jones, however, is never clearly delineated in the text. The assumptions of Himes's gendered argument follow this line of reasoning: The black woman's primary role is matriarch to the black family. As such, she provides physical and/or emotional nurturing to the black man when he is subjected to socioeconomic oppression. Her support, however, must accommodate his black masculine ethos; otherwise, she contributes onl y to his social denigration. When distilled, Ella Mae's "offense" is her unwillingness to assimilate a self-sacrificingly sexual and/or maternal subjectivity.

If Himes's unredeeming characterization of Ella Mae is a subterfuge for Jones's (and his own) anxieties about masculinity, then it becomes clear why Jones's opening internal monologue about the increased racial tension in Los Angeles is interrupted by Ella Mae's crying newborn. The crying baby serves as the pivotal point for Jones's transition of consciousness and as a metaphor for his need for black female support. Seeking emotional comfort, he imagines changing places with the child: "Lucky little rascal, I thought, didn't know how lucky he was. I wish I had Ella Mae in bed with me; I could lose myself with her too" (5).

Although Jones's desire to "lose" himself with Ella Mae is ostensibly a desire to use sex as a temporary escape mechanism, his yearning to change places with the child reveals his need to be nurtured and protected by the black matriarch. The tension between Jones's need to be nurtured by black women and his desire to be recognized as a dominant patriarch contributes to his "crisis" of masculine identity. Crisis denotes the perpetual state of heightened anxiety Jones experiences in regard to the viability of his masculinity. His anxiety stems from the fear that he will never be able to measure up socially and economically to white men-in his view, the occupants of the ideal masculine space. Not unlike the real-life Chester Himes, Jones's struggle for social equality blinds him to the elements of (white) patriarchy that necessitate sexual domination of the female. It is little wonder that Ella Mae's alleged (mis)reading of Jones's need for sexual support as a need for motherly sympathy fuels his anxiety about h is own masculinity. Denied full socioeconomic participation in white patriarchy, Jones, as a black man, can only exercise his masculinity through sexual conquest.

Arguably, Jones's conflict with Ella Mae has less to do with her pitying him than it does with his inability to articulate his feelings of powerlessness to her without appearing helpless. The fact that Jones provides no evidence that Ella Mae actually pities him bears this out. Because Ella Mae does not respond remorsefully to his "punishment" of not speaking to her for a week, Jones concludes that she is aware she has offended him. He says, "When I found out she'd done it [had sex with him] because she felt sorry for me I quit speaking to her for a week. But she hadn't let it bother her one way or the other" (5). Symptomatic of Jones's "crisis" of black masculinity. I argue, is a need for black women to acknowledge his sexual prowess. When Ella Mae does not acknowledge it--when in fact she "ignores" his reprimands altogether--Jones figures himself as a victim of both white supremacy and black female emasculation. Ella Mae confirms his suspicion that a social conspiracy of black women is leveled against him.

It is crucial that Himes presents only Jones's version of the relationship. By doing so, he privileges Jones's narrative which, in turn, effectively erases Ella Mae's experience of the relationship. The reader can only speculate about her perspective. Does Ella Mae have sex with Jones out of pity, or was she merely sexually attracted to him and acted in accord with momentary desire? Does she attach any political meaning to their relationship? Is sex for her simply a coping mechanism to deal with her reality as a black woman in a patriarchal society? Is her emotional detachment from Jones a way of guarding her own feelings?

Issues of class further complicate Himes's rendering of Jones's social emasculation at the hands of Alice, his affluent fiancee. Jones initially describes Alice as a "really fine chick" whose near-white beauty gives him "personal pride." He is proud of the "appearance she made among white people; proud of what she demanded from white people, and the credit they gave her; and her position and prestige among her own people." While with her in public, he reflects, "I really felt like something" (6). To Jones's thinking, Alice is the closest a black woman can come to feminine perfection without actually being white. The fundamental problem Jones perceives with his relationship with Alice is that her higher social status forces him to submit to her authority in ways that undermine his sense of his masculinity. When he reflects on the date Alice breaks with him which precipitates his trip to the Lincoln Theatre, he thinks that had Susie, one of his working-class lovers, canceled a date with him at the last minute, he would not have tolerated it. Jones reflects that Alice had "called and said she ought to attend a sorority meeting she'd forgotten all about-she was president of the local chapter. And would I really mind? Of course I couldn't mind; that was where the social conventions had me. If she'd been Susie I could have said, 'Hell yes, I mind,' but I had to be a gentleman with Alice" (6-7).

Himes explicitly frames Jones's conflict with Alice as an inability to freely express his personal desires because of socioeconomic variables beyond Jones's control. However, the comparison Jones makes between Alice and Susie reveals, when viewed from a black feminist perspective, the extent to which class informs black masculinist discourse. Unlike Alice, Susie does not possess the high social status or physical attributes that give Alice social prestige. Jones implies that he can acquire sexual favors from Susie at his leisure. He clearly prefers Susie's deference toward him to Alice's dismissal. He attributes it to Susie's unpretentious nature, a nature determined by her class status. Closer investigation, however, reveals that Jones's preference for Susie is inextricably linked to her self-sacrificingly sexual attitude. Not surprisingly, Jones feels empowered in his relationship with her. As Awkward perceptibly argues, black women can only been seen by "black males-in-crisis" when they have been "subsumed by male desire(s)" and "emptied of subjectivity and selfhood" (20).

Alice, by virtue of her own will and social privilege, poses a formidable challenge to Jones's masculinity. Her middle-class standing, however, coupled with her physical attributes, promises Jones socioeconomic mobility. In stark contrast, Susie's pronounced selflessness poses no challenge to Jones's masculinity, but her class status promises little, if any, social prestige. As a member of the working class, Jones feels Alice's social status eclipses his "rightful" masculine space. Her class status and physical (white) beauty affords her the "privilege" of choosing from an elite number of prominent black men. Jones implies that, if he were to demand Alice treat him as Susie does, it would jeopardize his chances of marriage. His dilemma, although articulated as an inability to express true manhood, resides in his inability to fully subjugate Alice sexually, on the one hand, and attain the spoils of her social standing and beauty on the other.

Jones clearly wants the prestige that comes with affiliation with someone of Alice's social caliber. His endurance of Alice's capricious character is not a mark of his social emasculation at the hands of the black elite. Rather, it represents the extent to which he is willing to compromise his own integrity to attain social privilege.

His constant references to the magnificence of Alice's white features bear this out. As she ascends the steps on their date to the white restaurant, Jones falls into a rapture: She "fell into the living room like Bette Davis, big-eyed and calisthenical and strictly sharp. She was togged in a flowing royal-purple chiffon evening gown with silver trimmings and a low square-cut neck that showed the tops of her creamy-white breasts with the darker disturbing seam down between. ... I gave her one look and caught an edge like a rash from head to foot, blinding and stinging. She was fine, fine, fine, so help me" (53). Clearly what marks Alice as "fine" for Jones is her resemblance to a glamorous white movie star.

Jones garners social currency when he is able to parade Alice in front of his friends. This becomes evident when Jones surprises Alice with dinner at an upscale white restaurant. While he presents the dinner as a gift to Alice, Jones's purpose is clearly to place her on exhibit to acquire social currency for himself. When the white men in the restaurant begin to stare at Alice in admiration, Jones notes that "she looked so poised and assured and beautiful, standing there among the white folks. I filled right up to the throat. I noticed a number of the white men sliding furtive glances of admiration at her, and I thought, 'You just go right on and keep yours, brothers, and I'll keep mine-and won't miss a thing either'" (58).

Given Jones's obvious preoccupation with whiteness, he might be expected to understand why Alice passes as white when she goes to such restaurants. However, when Alice informs Jones that her embarrassment in the restaurant stems from her awareness that white people know" 'just what we are' " (60), he becomes infuriated and condemns Alice for being embarrassed to be black. Later that same evening, after a traumatic encounter with racist policemen, Jones continues to chide Alice. While sitting on the beachfront he asks her if she is "lust finding out' "she is" 'a nigger?' "(64). Jones's critique of white oppression is radically gendered. For him, using Alice as a social commodity to impress whites is a viable mode of resistance. When Alice utilizes her own ability to pass for similar purposes, however, Jones views her actions as racially reprehensible. Neither Jones nor the novel itself offers any space to imagine women employing modes of co-option or resistance to white supremacy. As a result, black female ag ency is presented as emasculating to black men.

This double standard is also made manifest in Jones's response to Alice's implied lesbian encounters and sexual relations with white men. Despite his own numerous sexual indiscretions, including one with a white woman, Jones condemns Alice for what he perceives as her socio-sexual arrogance and corruption. When Jones is first introduced to Tom Leighton, he immediately suspects Alice of having an affair with him: "She might be having an affair with Leighton sure enough, I thought. She wouldn't count that, just like she wouldn't count that stuff at Stella's. She'd probably be proud of it, I thought; probably feel that I shouldn't resent it even if I found out" (87). That Jones engages in sexual affairs with other women has no bearing on his rendering of Alice's moral character. What marks her alleged sexual behavior as morally/socially reprehensible is its socioeconomic relationship to black patriarchy. To Jones's way of thinking, black female sex with white men is socially debilitating for black men because i t calls attention to their socioeconomic impotence. Operating on an uneven playing field, black men cannot compete sexually with white men for (black and white) female acquisition/domination.

When Jones happens upon Alice and Tom Leighton, shortly after returning from his failed rendezvous with Madge, he becomes enraged and articulates his socio-sexual anxieties about white men and black women. He reflects angrily:

It really galled me to have a white guy take my girl out on a date. I wouldn't have minded so much if he had been the sharpest, richest, most important coloured guy in the world; I'd have still felt I could compete. But a white guy had his colour--I couldn't compete with that. It was all up to the chick--if she liked white, I didn't have a chance; if she didn't, I didn't have anything to worry about. But I'd have to know, and I didn't know about Alice. (142)

Jones's rendering of white privilege places the black female in a curious relationship to power. In short, hers is the power to choose the mate of her choice. Given that the social odds are stacked against black men, all they can do is hope black women do not "like white." Jones's view of black female "privilege" conspicuously ignores the exploitive dynamic traditionally informing relationships between white men and black women. Further, it collapses class and caste distinctions among black women to accommodate a black male-centered discourse that renders invisible the gender privilege black men have historically exercised over black women.

At points, Jones seems to sense the contradictions in his own understanding. He is aware, for instance, that even if he marries Alice his access to the spoils of white patriarchy will still be limited by race. Himes amplifies Jones's awareness of his own contradictions, I argue, to demonstrate the "Catch-22" dynamic of white supremacy. Jones's "choices"--either to marry Alice or rape Madge--provide him no consolation, because both require acquiescence to white supremacist ideology. Ultimately, Himes argues that black (male) self-determinacy is impossible in a white supremacist society. A black male feminist approach, however, reveals that the Jones's social dilemma is informed by his deep investment in both white patriarchy and middle-class values.

The extent of Jones's investment is brought to the fore the morning after his unsuccessful attempt at a sexual conquest of Madge. He dreams of a black man who attempts to kill an unarmed white man with a large knife. The dream highlights the black man's inability to wound his white enemy. Although appearing helpless, the white man actually maintains the upper hand. His appearance of helplessness is in fact a facade he uses to lure the black man closer in order to murder him. By the time the black man realizes that the white man wields a concealed weapon, the damage has been done and the only option the black man has is to flee for his life. After Jones wakes from this dream, he reflects on the limitations of his socioeconomic mobility. Aware that most black people would consider him "a lucky black boy" because he has the potential to become an "important Negro," he responds, "if you couldn't swing down Hollywood Boulevard and know that you belonged; if you couldn't make a polite pass at Lana Turner at Ciro's without having the gendarmes beat the black off you for getting out of your place; if you couldn't eat a thirty-dollar dinner at a hotel without choking on the insults, being a great big 'Mister' nigger didn't mean a thing." Jones's ostensible desire is to be "accepted as a man ... without ambition, without distinction, either of race, creed, or colour; just a simple Joe" who can walk "down an American street... without any other identifying characteristics but weight, height, and gender" (153).

There are striking contradictions in Jones's rendering of the black middle-class ethos and his notion of white privilege that call into question his claim that all he wants is to be a "simple Joe." What he finds unacceptable about the black middle class is not their wealth, power, or prestige---characteristics that draw him to Alice in the first place--but their willingness to be satisfied with high social standing that is limited to the black community. From Jones's perspective, if whites do not respect the black middle class, prestige in the black community is rendered meaningless. To this end, the social position of an average working-class white man--because he is judged on merit alone--is more desirable than that of a wealthy black professional. Jones's ostensible desire for simple equality, however, is belied by his idea of what constitutes equality. The privileges he values--to eat at expensive restaurants and rub shoulders with the white rich and famous-are informed by a middle-class ethos. Jones des ires far more than just to be a Black Everyman or a "simple Joe." He wants both the social privileges that come with being a white male, and the socioeconomic mobility that comes with being wealthy. That he is blind to this aspect of his character throws his rendering of the black middle class and white society radically into question.

Refocusing with the black women's perspective in the foreground reveals the gendered assumptions underpinning Himes's black masculine discourse. His text provides a clear case of what Deborah King calls "monist" black politics. To black male monist thinking, the end to black male oppression will necessarily precipitate the end to all oppressions, including sexism. Thus, any attempt by black women to vocalize the specific intraracial gender oppression of black men is interpreted not only as compromising to racial solidarity but emasculating to black men. Black female oppression becomes subsumed within the totalizing, gendered discourse of black oppression. Black male oppression, then, masquerades as the oppression of all black people.

The monist substructure of Himes's text subsumes black female oppression within a veiled black masculine discourse, thereby precluding consideration of the black man as a victimizer of black women. No previous critic has taken Himes to task for his phallocentric rendering of his black female characters. The women continue to be relegated to the margins of criticism and elided from serious consideration. To demonstrate the usefulness of such a black male feminist perspective, I will consider Ella Mae's critique of Jones as it relates to his internalization of white (male) supremacist ideology, on the one hand, and his investment in monist reasoning to resist this same ideology, on the other. Her perspective on Jones points directly to the difficulty of constructing a program of resistance in a monist system.

Ella Mae's dialogue with Jones prior to his date with Alice at an upscale white restaurant underscores the contradictions in his racial politics. After Jones takes an extended shower, Ella Mae says," 'You oughta be clean enough even for Alice now--two baths in one day.' "Jones replies jokingly, "'I'm tryna turn white.'" "Undeterred by his jocularity, Ella Mae continues to press the point." 'I wouldn't be s'prised none,'" she chides," 'lil as it's said.'" Clearly unnerved by Ella Mae's insinuations, Jones, unable to "let it go," continues his course of signifying. "'You know how much I love the white folks,' "he says." 'You just ain't saying it, either,'" Ella Mae retorts, "'All that talking you do 'bout 'em all the time. I see you got the whitest coloured girl you could find'" (47).

When Ella Mae extends her critique to include Jones's selection of a "'rich and light and almost white'" girl in Alice, he becomes defensive and accuses her of acting " 'like a black gal.' "To act "like a black gal" is for Jones to attack black men who are striving to improve their socioeconomic condition. It is also for darker-skinned women to purposely misrepresent the social dynamics informing the relationship between black men and white or fairer-skinned women as a mode of control. It makes sense, the narrative suggests, that black men would gravitate toward white and faired-skinned women given the abrupt nature of darker-skinned women. It is out of racial jealousy, then, and not political insight that Ella Mae condemns Jones.

Closer investigation reveals that Jones is wedded to notions of white beauty. Even as he consciously grapples with various elements of white supremacy, he never fully addresses his desire for white and fairer-skinned women. Because Jones does not imagine that darker-skinned black women can engage, without racial envy, the taboos existing between black men and white/light women, he can dismiss Ella Mae's appraisal of his relationship with Alice altogether. In fact, Jones displaces his anxiety about his own internalization of white supremacy onto Ella Mae: "'Okay, baby, I quit,' "Jones finally relinquishes and then reflects, "I wondered what was eating her" (47). Later, in the company of the black female social workers at Alice's house, Jones makes a similar assessment of Cleo, one of the darker-skinned social workers. When she states she does not understand why prominent black men choose to marry "white tramps" over black women of comparable social standing, Jones remarks," 'You wouldn't [understand] ... as b lack as you are'" (85). To be darker-skinned for Jones is clearly to be less desirable sexually and socially than light and white women.

The intensity and depth of Ella Mae's critique make clear Himes's awareness, on some level, of his protagonist's investment in white supremacist ideology. That Jones is clearly taken aback by Ella Mae's accusations of his wanting to be white reveals that her accusations have an impact on him. The question emerges: What is Himes attempting to convey about Jones and Ella Mae in this scene? The few critics who address Ella Mae's role in the novel describe her behavior toward Jones as the jealous reaction of an ex-lover. Himes's own perspective regarding the white woman/black man taboo definitely supports this reading. In his autobiography My Life of Absurdity, he accuses black women and white men of throwing "me into the arms of white women, who were eager enough to hold me" (34-35). This telling comment reveals the extent to which Himes considered the pursuit of white women by black men symptomatic of both black women's hostility toward black men and white male oppression. Jones's refusal, then, to seriously e ngage Ella Mae's accusation of his preference for white and light-skinned women can be read as Himes's attempt to underscore the sexual tensions still existing between the two exlovers--namely, Ella Mae's desire to rekindle the relationship with Jones. Her critical appraisal of Jones's penchant for light and white women is framed as a political ploy to retain his affection.

More evidence of Himes's monist politics is revealed in Jones's interaction with Alice shortly after he tells her of his demotion. When attempting to explain to Alice why he retaliates in kind to Madge's racial slur, Jones becomes frustrated because Alice's only concern is for him to reinstate himself in the company. She wants him to apologize to Madge because in her view Madge's insult was "'such a little thing.' "Lamenting Alice's ultimatum to either apologize to Madge or risk losing her, Jones reflects, "I didn't have a choice" (99). In a dream sequence immediately following Jones's dialogue with Alice, Jones finds himself chasing after Alice, who is screaming for help in a wooded area. Armed with a ".45-calibre short-barreled revolver" that's so large that in order to hide it he has to stuff it in his trousers, Jones arrives at the scene of the crime only to find that Alice has been dwarfed into "a little rag doll." When Jones looks up from the little doll, he sees, leaning on the fence, "millions of whi te women ... looking at me, giving me the most sympathetic smiles I ever saw." Awaking from the dream, Jones feels "absolute impotence" until he begins thinking about Madge. Even as he expresses his contempt for her, his sexual language implies his desire to seduce her. He reflects, "Memory of my fight with Alice came back, and then I saw Madge's kidney-shaped mouth, brutal at the edges, spitting out the word 'nigger' and something took a heavy hammer and nailed me to the bed" (101).

The salient sexual imagery in this dream sequence supports Himes's misgivings about black women who criticize black men, like Jones, who pursue relationships with white women. Jones's oversized phallus, represented by the sawed off revolver that he fails to conceal adequately beneath his trousers, reveals at once his dangerous potential as an oppressed blackman and the limits of that potential demonstrated by the inability of his "gun" to harm the yellow-tusked swine that threaten to harm Alice. Jones's gaze from the full-sized white woman on the fence to the dead, little Alice "rag doll" in his hand, and then back to the fence containing a million white women, calls attention to the disparity in size and number between Alice and the million white women on the fence. His gaze suggests that he has wasted valuable energies pursuing Alice's affection. She is, in fact, a poor substitute for the "real" white women on the fence. Their sympathetic smiles set against Alice's unsparing remarks to Jones the previous d ay in regard to his dilemma with Madge reinforce Himes's thinking about black men who actively pursue white woman. Ultimately, the dream confirms that emasculating black women compel black men to seek out sympathetic partners in white women. It also foreshadows Jones's sexual pursuit of Madge.

Ella Mae's conversation with Jones the night he plans his rendezvous with Madge underscores the black male cultural narratives that inform Jones's choice of Madge over Alice. After taking a shower and getting dressed, Jones "jokes" with Ella Mae that he is "'going out with'" a "'white chick tonight'" (137). Cognizant of his preoccupation with whiteness, Ella Mae retorts," 'You're saying it for a joke... but I believe you, you're just the type.'" As he had in his earlier dialogue with Ella Mae, Bob tries to defuse her suspicion with jocular prompting. He replies," 'You know I like my white women, baby.... Couldn't get along with without 'em.'" Undeterred by his banter, Ella Mae returns," 'You just like all the niggers .... Get a white woman and go from Cadillacs to cotton sacks'"(137).

Embedded in Ella Mae's reply to Bob are several cultural narratives of black male social progress. Because many black men were systematically denied access to property ownership for much of the first half of the century, ownership of expensive cars, specifically Cadillacs, became a marker of socioeconomic success. That Jones covets his '42 Buick Roadmaster because he knows "rich white folks out in Beverly couldn't even buy a new car now" (10) speaks directly to this dynamic. Like expensive automobiles, relationships with white woman were also viewed as material markers of black male success. Many affluent black men would abandon black women of their own class to marry or date white women of lower social standing. From the vantage point of these black men, the "whiteness" of white women compensated for whatever they lacked in social standing. For example, Peaches, a black female worker on Jones's crew, notes," 'If a coloured girl asks one of you niggers to take her to the show you start grumbling 'bout money- -liable to even ask her to pay the way. And then the raggedest-looking old beat-up white tramp can come by and get your whole paycheck. You dump like a dump truck'" (134). Most crucially, Ella Mae's and Peaches's assessment of socially and morally retrogressive nature of black man-white woman relationships bears itself out in Jones's eventual choice of Madge over Alice.

Even as Himes discounts the black female voices in the text, he infuses an argument in Jones's narrative to circumvent (white) readings of Jones's attraction to Madge as inherently primitive. In an extended internal monologue, Jones enumerates a litany of sexual exploits with "good" white women from his past. He thinks,

I had known white girls in both California and Ohio. I had gone with a little Italian girl in Cleveland for almost a year. Then there had been a tall brown-haired girl who worked as a stenographer in a downtown office who used to let me take her out now and than.... Both of them were good girls, as good morally as most.... So it wasn't that Madge was white; it was the way she used it. She had a sign up in front of her as big as Civic Center-KEEP AWAY, NIGGERS, I'M WHITE! And without having to say one word she could keep all the white men in the world feeling they had to protect her from black rapists. That made her doubly dangerous because she thought about Negro men. (125)

Himes amplifies the sexual-racial intensity between Madge and Jones by highlighting Madge's social standing as an uneducated, middle-aged, poor, single woman. In stark contrast, Jones is an up-and-coming professional who has several years of college training and a promising future. When Jones is demoted from leaderman to machinist for retaliating in kind to Madge's racial slurs, his hate/lust toward her is exacerbated by his awareness that "all she had was her colour" (179). It is precisely because she lacks social status that her whiteness is amplified. In short, her only means of power is her relationship to white men as the paragon of white virtue. Jones feels that she understands this dynamic and uses it to exert her racial power over him. What Jones ostensibly wants to do is force her to submit to him sexually as a way to recuperate his lost manhood and challenge white supremacy. At one point Jones thinks that if he could "just get over the notion [that] women were the same, black and white" (130). he c ould transcend his fear of white power and sexually dominate Madge.

The politics of racial resistance that inform Jones's dilemma with Madge obscure the phallocentric underpinnings of his rationale. His sexual conquest of Madge is framed as an ideological challenge to white supremacy which, on some level, he is aware he has internalized. Thus, Jones experiences his desire to dominate Madge sexually as an attempt to overturn the belief that white women are by nature more beautiful and sexual desirous than black women. Moreover, to "corrupt" the white female is for Jones to resist the tenets of white supremacy and empty white patriarchy of its socio-psychological potency. A black male feminist perspective, however, calls attention to the contradictions implicit in Jones's program of resistance. To frame a strategy of resistance in terms of a patriarchal ethos dependent upon female domination is clearly problematic. Its most debilitating effect is the erasure of the experience of racism and sexism for black women. Jones attempts to subvert the white patriarchal system by invert ing the power dynamic serve only to reinscribe phallocentric notions of power and control. The female body as commodity remains the site where masculinity is negotiated.

Many unresolved tensions echo throughout If He Hollers. Most crucially, the text foregrounds the black man's inability to subvert the white patriarchal discourse without at once substantiating mythologies of black primitivism. A black male feminist criticism reveals that such tensions remain unresolved precisely because the black male discourse frames itself ideologically within the contours of white masculinity. Bob Jones, and to a disturbing extent Chester Himes, could not imagine subverting white supremacy without domination of the white female body. Given that focus, black women are simply invisible, their voices silenced or misunderstood. Ella Mae's suspicion that Jones in fact wanted to be white appears all the more relevant in light of his total inability to hear her.

The longstanding tradition of phallocentric criticism of the novel reveals the extent to which black monist racial reasoning--now under serious interrogation by black feminists like Deborah King--has informed black (male) criticism. Little wonder that Ella Mae, who provides the most astute criticism of Jones, has been ignored by literary critics as well as by Jones--or that Alice's experiences of racism and sexism have never been at issue. If, as Valerie Smith argues, the most important contribution black men can make to the feminist project is through an investigation of "the way constructions of masculinity affect the experience of race, and the way that connection is represented in literature" (496), black men must rigorously engage the gender politics informing black male texts. Most central black male figures in the African American literary canon--Frederick Douglass, Charles Chestnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, James Weldon Johnson, Wallace Thurman, and Ernest Gaines-- have received either cursory attention with regard to their gendered politics or none at all. Unfortunately, black women--who have written most of the feminist criticism available on these important writers--have had little success in recruiting black men for this endeavor.

If black male critics are to be useful and productive to the black feminist project--to enhancing the discourse on African American literature in general--they must stop policing black male borders and take the lion's share of the burden of redressing phallocentric readings of black male-authored texts. Black feminists, Awkward rightly argues, have set the precedent for such revisioning of black masculinity. Before black men can productively engage black feminists on the issue of black masculinity, however, they must accept that their victimization in America as black men does not exempt them from participation in patriarchy. The dismantling of patriarchy is no more the sole responsibility of black women than is the dismantling of white supremacy in America the sole responsibility of black people. To echo the words of Toni Morrison, when black men and women write as critics and authors, "all necks are on the line" (397).

Works Cited

Awkward, Michael. "A Black Mans Place(s) in Black Feminist Criticism." Representing Black Men. Ed. Marcellus Blount and George P. Cunningham. New York: Routledge, 1996. 3-26.

Fabre, Michel, and Edward Margolies. The Several Lives of Chester Himes. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1997.

Gayle, Addison Jr. The Way of the New World: The Black Novel in America. Garden City: Anchor P, 1975.

Himes, Chester. If He Hollers Let Him Go. 1945. New York: Thunder's Mouth P, 1986.

---. My Life of Absurdity. 1976. New York: Thunder's Mouth P, 1995.

King, Deborah. "Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14.1 (1988): 42-72.

Milliken, Stephen. Chester Himes: A Critical Appraisal. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1976.

Morrison, Toni. "Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature." Within the Circle. Ed. Angelyn Mitchell. Durham: Duke UP, 1994. 368-98.

Muller, Gilbert. Chester Himes. Boston: Twayne, 1989.

Smith, Valerie. "Gender and Afro-Americanist Literary Theory and Criticism." Within the Circle. Ed. Angelyn Mitchell. Durham: Duke UP, 1994. 482-98.

David Ikard is a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose interests include African American literature, gender studies, and identity politics. His research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary constructions of black resistance. He would like to thank Craig Werner for extensive comments and guidance on this paper.

[c] 2002 Davod Ikard