Alex Wheatle on Chester Himes, US Black Crime Writer Who Inspired Him

After the Brixton riots in 1981, Alex Wheatle was made to serve time in London prison. The creative force that he needs for his career as a writer starts to build after his cellmate advises him to start reading black writers’ novels. The suggestion turns his teenage life around, making him one of the greatest American crime writers of all time.

Alex wheatle says Chester Himes, the amazing writer, should be known. He included that it was one of the novelist work that he read while still in prison.

Director Steve McQueen’s small Axe season one, which was air on BBC one on Sunday, acted the moment Wheatle fell in love with black writing. In the act, cellmate Simeon urges Wheatle to read more about black culture, British and more. Wheatle, acted by cole, is seen to pick up the history book, The Black Jacobins.

On the contrary, Alex Wheatle, who now authored 15 books, says the fiction novels he grasped most in jail were Chester Himes.

Chester Himes’ stories, which featured New York Gravedigger Jones and detective coffin Ed Johnson are set in Harlem. He was birthed in Missouri in 1909 by a middle-class family.

Chester Himes died in 1984, Few years after Alex wheatle discovered his unique, hard-driven crime novels such as The Real Cool Killers and A Rage in Harlem.

Alex explained that he use to enjoy non-fiction by the likes of CLR James, “but When I asked my cellmate for novels to relate to my life as a young black guy in early 80’s London, he told me that there wasn’t much and I should read Chester Himes”.

I found Chester Himes’s book, ‘amazingly exciting the stories set in Harlem featuring the New York detective Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones.

He further clarified that ” But what piqued my interest was when I realized that Himes had been in prison too, but in his case, year’s. It’s where his writing career began and now I see a parallel”.

Pig Higginson, The Noir Atlantic author, a novel about Chester Himes and his impact on other writers and novelists, Says a small group in the US has always read Himes.

Piv Higginson explained that ” But he became a literary star in Europe because in his 40s he moved to France and later to Spain. Even now, I think the majority of his readers are in France. “

Sheyi Cole, who acted Alex Wheatle in Director Steve McQueen’s small Axe films, says that “Chester Himes was a highly irascible man and a chronic alcoholic. He could be very difficult with publishers, But it’s all part of what makes him interesting.”