Black Existentialism: Harlem Noir

Catalog description

In A Rage in Harlem, the first in a series of ten detective novels set in Harlem, Chester Himes describes New York‘s (in)famous ghetto as “a city of black people who are convulsed in desperate living.” In this course we will consider the realities—and the unrealities—that characterize that statement. Himes‘s portrayal of Harlem is shaped by its gritty history, but also by expatriate nostalgia, and his inimitable (and exaggerated), hard-edged, visceral style. We begin with careful study of the social, economic and political forces that shaped Harlem before moving on to discuss whether and how the noir genre, with its emphases on sex and violence, corruption, betrayal, brutality, disillusion and disenchantment becomes an ideal medium for the expression of Himes‘s alienation and angry creativity. What's up with Himes‘s obsession with the absurd, the grim and grotesque? How does his pessimistic insistence on black‘s “getting blacker” manifest in several of his detective novels? Over the course of the semester, we will pay particular attention to the ways in which Himes turns the realities of black life into the unrealities, absurdities and grotesqueries of black life so widely noted in this pulp fiction. In doing so, we sight the existentialist vein in his work and collectively theorize the fluid states of being (and nothingness) that emerge within the noir worlds that he creates.