Yesterday Will Make You Cry

By Chester Himes, Marc Gerald (editor), Samuel Blumenfeld (editor)

Book cover of Yesterday Will Make You Cry

Book description

A classic restored-the complete and unexpurgated text of a great African-American writer's brutal and lyrical novel of prison life. First published in reduced and bowdlerized form in 1952 as Cast the First Stone, Yesterday Will Make You Cry was Chester Himes's first, most powerful, and autobiographical novel. This Old School…

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1 author picked Yesterday Will Make You Cry as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

James Hannaham

Author

This book has a provenance that’s almost like a prison sentence: released in 1953 under the title Cast the First Stone, it would have been Himes’ first novel, but its frankness about homosexual relationships in prison and the fact that a Black writer had written white main characters, made publishers shit their pants and doctor the life out of it to make it conform to 50s market expectations. Of course, in the process, they ruined it.

But in 1998, Old School Books released Himes’ "director’s cut,” a much different, more beautiful, raw, and thoughtful book that’s as much about…

From James' list on books for and about convicts and ex-convicts.