Love Jones: A Black Male Feminist Critique of Chester Himes's "If He Hollers Let Him Go"

Abstract

n his insightful essay A Black Man's Place(s) in Black Feminist Criticism, Michael Awkward asks an important question: Can black men like himself-those who are deeply invested in resisting patriarchal power, and for whom black women's lives, art, and literature have been crucial to their own intellectual, emotional, and spiritual development-do black feminist criticism? Responding to the womanist criticism of Alice Walker and Sherley Anne Williams and the psychoanalytical approach of Hortense Spillers, Awkward answers the question by emphasizing the role of black men in analyzing the of patriarchy that have already divided us (15). He concentrates on the ways that black men's criticism of black women's texts can enhance the study of black women's literature. For this criticism to be productive, Awkward argues, black men must eschew traditional patriarchal desires for control and erasure of the 'female,' and perform sophisticated, informed, and contentious critiques of phallocentric practices ... in an effort to redefine our notions of black male (and female) textuality and subjectivity (21).