Yesterday Will Make You Cry

From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a masterful autobiographical novel about the injustices of the prison system and the humanity that flourishes despite it—in gay love, emotional maturation, and redemption

Nineteen-year-old Jimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery. A thrill-seeking white teenager from Mississippi who was thrown out of school more than once, he is able to pay for college with a nice settlement from a workplace accident. But before too long, he’s kicked out again, and embarks on a rough and tumble life that lands him in the state penitentiary, where life is monotonous, violent, and cruel.

The penitentiary is a place where terror and chaos reign, where corrupt guards inflict casual and insidious violence, where men wholly isolated from the outside world must preserve their dignity and find fulfillment through years of boredom and uncertainty. The psychological effects are devastating, and when a fire breaks out that unleashes a deadly mayhem, it seems as though Jimmy’s entire world is unraveling. When he later develops a tender and passionate relationship with fellow convict Rico, hope begins to glimmer, and his eventual foray into writing channels the confusion of his experience into something finally resembling redemption.

Unsettlingly vivid but also resonant and affirming, Yesterday Will Make You Cry is drawn from Chester Himes’s own life and demonstrates the impressive range of literary powers possessed by this underappreciated master.