PAPERBACK ISBN: 0-88258-215-1      

$24.95

144 pages; 6 x 9 inches

by Chester B. Himes, with a Postscript by Calvin Hernton

With precision of imagery and description, A Case of Rape, penned by acclaimed novelist Chester Himes (If He Hollers Let Him Go, Cotton Comes to Harlem), creates the typical mystery, then peels away layer after layer of truth obscured by unreported facts and witness testimony. Yet the novel is no mere fictional account. It is also a biting social critique, revealing the roots and supporting structure of the monstrous network of racial and sexual taboos that exists in the real world. It shows that, whether in fact or in fiction, these taboos profoundly affect both innocents and victims of the color line.  This edition of Himes’s novel includes a postscript by Calvin Hernton, author of the controversial study, Sex and Racism in America. In it, Hernton suggests that A Case of Rape is not about the crime it describes. Rather, this gem of Himesian thought and style, he writes, actually illuminates and condemns the age­ old “mythology of rape as associated with the his­torical stereotype of black men being rapists of white women.” His pungent commentary also points out the sexism that accompanies this denigrating mythology, and reacquaints readers with a prolific and passionate expatriate author whose powerful work incessantly attacked racism and spotlighted the insanities surrounding “the scarlet equation” of inter­racial love.

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