The Third Generation

Not since D. H. Lawrence's Sons Lovers has the desperate tie between a mother son been revealed with such agonizing power psychological depth. Charles's mother looks white feels white, but she is unalterably black, hates it. Embittered domineering, she is revolted by her husband's dark skin, scornful of his middle-class success-all her hopes center on her son. Charles has inherited her light skin her rage-a rage that will catapult him past two societies into a violent no-man's-land of self-destruction. The heartbreaking love between these two mounts to tragic crisis as Charles, unable to adjust to black or white society, enters a nether world of vicious debauchery self-ruin. The Third Generation is Chester Himes's great novel of a young man driven by both bitter love passionate hate for his own heritage. Chester Himes is the author of novels, short stories, essays, films, is well know for his classic Harlem crime series, which includes Cotton Comes to Harlem. Himes began to write while serving a prison term for jewel theft in the early 1940s, emigrated to France in 1953, later to Spain, where he died in 1984.