Publication details
“Ain't No Law against It” : Anatomy of Chester Himes’s Tricksters
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In two hardboiled novels, A Rage in Harlem (1957) and The Big Gold Dream (1959), Chester Himes introduces two African American trickster characters living in the 1950s Harlem; Goldy, who crossdresses as a nun and sells tickets to heaven on the streets of Harlem, and Sweet Prophet, who is a revivalist preacher and uses hypnosis to steal 30 thousand dollars of one of his followers. Referencing hermeneutics, poststructuralism and intertextuality, the paper tracks various African American folk strategies tricksters use to deceive, including shape-shifting, mockery of the sacred, theft and Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s linguistic practice of signifyin(g). As Robert D. Pelton notes, the trickster establishes the world as it is, “against the plans of the gods and threat of monsters” (Trickster). In order to feed their endless appetites, Black hardboiled tricksters relieve the habitual hardboiled tension between an individual and the police or between the government and civilians through various amoral practices. In the violent underworld of American society driven by systemic oppression of minoritized communities, tricksters present what Mircea Eliade calls “a mythology of the human condition” (Myth); their role in the human struggle is to ensure the world remains human even if it means their own failure and death. By proposing a firm connection between African American folktales as researched by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Maria Tatar or Zora Neale Hurston, and hardboiled fiction of the 20th century, the paper argues that Himes creates a hybrid narrative derived from indigenous mythological tradition based on silent resistance, mimicry and disguise. The adaptation of the hardboiled genre then presents a tool to engage vernacular theory and criticism and employ antiracist critique by focusing on the social and political atmosphere and by presenting a complexity of African American cultural signs. Eliade, M. The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1969. Pelton, R.D. The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. California UP, 1980. |
| Related projects: |