45 pages • 1 hour read
Chester HimesCotton Comes To Harlem
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1964A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Uncle Bud takes the bale of cotton to sell at a junkyard. On the way he is stopped by white police, who hassle him and ask if he has the $87,000. Bud tells them if he did, he’d be on his way back to Africa, “Where wouldn’t any white mother-rapers like you be flicking with me all the time” (45). At the junkyard, Bud haggles with the Jewish owner, Mr. Goodman, over the bale of cotton, eventually agreeing on $25. Two black workers watch on as this takes place, silently rooting for Bud. At the Back-to-the-Southland headquarters, Colonel Calhoun orders an elaborate Southern breakfast and eats it by the window while the black protestors watch on and feel nostalgic for home. Bill Davis, one of the recruiters for Deke’s Back-to-Africa movement, tells Calhoun he should get out of Harlem. The protestors outside cheer Bill on for speaking up to the white man: “He had stood right up to that ol’ white man and tol’ him something to his teeth. They respected him” (47). One of the black junkyard workers, Joshua, sees the advertisement for the bale of cotton and tells Calhoun he knows where it is. Calhoun asks Joshua to bring it to the railroad station that night. Joshua asks for $100, and Calhoun agrees.
Chapter 10 Summary
An ugly, red-haired policeman keeps watch on Iris, Deke’s girl. The policeman tries to focus on the job but is overcome with lust and shame: “[H]er perfumed voluptuous body with its effluvium of sex outraged his sensibilities. His puritanical soul felt affronted by this aura of sex and his perverse imagination filled him with a sense of guilt” (50). Iris tells him if he weren’t so ugly, they could pass the time making love. The policeman jokes that he could wear a bag over his head and just cut out the eyes and mouth. Iris finds a bag. She leads him into the bedroom, where she begins to undress. The policeman tells her to knock it off, but Iris tells him he can’t stop her from undressing in her own room. She continues to strip and taunt him, begging him to take her. Finally, the policeman begins to undress and hangs up his gun out of her reach. As he climbs on top of Iris, the phone rings. Iris answers and calls for help, then hangs up. The policeman realizes it must be the police cruiser outside calling, but by the time he picks up, they’ve hung up. Iris puts on a coat and some shoes, sneaks out, and locks the policeman in the corridor. When the other policemen arrive, they find him naked with a bag over his head and laugh at his predicament. Iris goes to Barry’s place, where she demands to know where Deke is. Barry calls Deke to see if it’s safe. While Barry is gone, his lover tells Iris she overheard Barry on the phone and that Deke is with Mabel Hill. Infuriated, Iris leaves to find them.
Chapter 11 Summary
Hiding out at Mabel’s place has proven more complicated than Deke expected; he has to hide when policemen and the undertaker come over, and Mabel’s tireless sex drive exhausts him: “if John Hill hadn’t been shot she’d have loved him to death” (56). Barry warns Deke that Iris is looking for him, and the two men arrange to meet up with Calhoun that night. Someone pounds on the door. Thanks to Barry, Deke knows Iris is looking for him, but he has too much going trying to keep Mabel happy: “one bitch at a time was enough” (56). Deke worries that the police might follow Iris to Mabel’s place. Over the phone, Deke and Barry arrange to meet up with Calhoun that night, when there’s a pounding on the door. Thinking it might be the police, Deke hides in the closet. Mabel answers and discovers Iris. The chain on the door prevents Iris from getting in, but she threatens to go to the police if Deke and Mabel don’t let her inside. Mabel and Iris fight over Deke, egged on by Mabel claiming to be pregnant with Deke’s baby—an especially cutting blow since Iris can’t have children. Iris gets a hold of Deke’s pistol and shoots Mabel, killing her. Deke beats Iris up and contemplates killing her so she can’t rat on him, but he realizes people probably heard the gunshots and called the police. After climbing onto the fire escape, Deke exits through an apartment on the floor below. Deke leaves the building and loses himself in the streets of Harlem.
Chapter 12 Summary
Lieutenant Anderson asks Grave Digger and Coffin Ed why their car was found abandoned. The detectives evade the question and don’t own up to it having been stolen. Anderson tells Grave Digger and Coffin Ed that Iris has been arrested for killing Mabel. The police found no sign of Deke at the apartment, but they suspect he may have been there and are eager to talk to Iris. In the interrogation room Iris sasses the men, and Coffin Ed almost hits her when he sees she’s already covered in bruises and looking worse for the wear: “Well, well, well…Ain’t you beautiful” (61). Iris tells the detectives what happened and confesses that Deke planned to take the money he’d conned from the Back-to-Africa movement. Iris reveals that Deke will likely be hiding out with Barry. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed tell her she better be ready to take down Deke once they find him, and Iris assures them she will. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed ask Anderson to put a tail on Barry. Barry learns from his lover that Iris killed Mabel. At a bar Barry tries calling Deke but becomes paranoid the police are tracing the call. Barry hurries out of the bar and hops into a taxi, seeing a police car heading that way as he drives off. Barry doesn’t realize he’s being tailed by the police, despite his efforts to lose them. Anderson monitors the police following Barry and gets Coffin Ed and Grave Digger on the phone to fill them in.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
Racial stereotypes abound in this section. Calhoun eats Southern food like biscuits and grits to remind the black people of home and entice them to come South (47), and the Jewish junkyard owner Abraham Goodman is tightfisted with money, saying, “What am I, your father, to give you money for nothing? […] You think I am Abraham Lincoln instead of Abraham Goodman?” (46). These one-note depictions of non-black characters underscore Himes’s mistrust of white people, which is echoed many times in the novel. For example, when Goodman tries to haggle Uncle Bud, his own workers turn against him: “All three colored men were against Mr. Goodman. He felt trapped and guilty, as though he’d been caught taking advantage” (46). Racial tension continues to build as the Back-to-the-Southland and Back-to-Africa movements face off with one another. The protestors outside of the Back-to-the-Southland headquarters nearly revert to violence, with one man stopping another from throwing a brick through the window: “None of that, son, we’re peaceful” (48). However, when questioned why they remain peaceful, the man can provide no answer. Written in 1965, this moment likely reflects Himes’s commentary on the state of the civil rights movement. Popular civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. famously called for peaceful protest, though many felt that violence was needed to truly create change.
Chapter 9 brings attention back to the whereabouts of the bale of cotton. The cotton changes hands from Uncle Bud to Goodman to Joshua, who makes a deal to sell it to Calhoun. This focus on the whereabouts of the cotton implies its connection with the missing $87,000 and ties Calhoun and his Back-to-the-Southland movement to the hijacking at the beginning of the novel. Readers continue to have more information than the two detectives, Coffin Ed and Grave Digger, who search for Deke, mistakenly believing he will lead them to the missing money while unaware of the cotton that will actually solve the mystery.
Chapters 10, 11, and 12 solidify Iris’s role as a femme fatale figure. In crime and noir novels, a femme fatale acts as an irresistible seductress who ultimately brings about the downfall of her romantic interest. Iris has remained faithful to Deke, refusing to tell anything about his con or his whereabouts; in Chapter 10 she seduces the cop assigned to watch her, using whatever means necessary to get back to Deke. However, when she discovers Deke has been sleeping with Mabel, Iris turns on him and becomes consumed with revenge, first killing Mabel and then vowing to sell Deke out to the police in Chapter 12. In some ways Iris is one of the most resourceful and clever characters. However, an undercurrent of rage toward women also surrounds her character and the other women of the novel. Iris’s seduction of the cop sends him into a blind fury, in which he calls her a “Goddamed whore” and a “host-ass slut” (52). Deke considers killing Iris to cover his tracks and “stop her from talking forever” (58). This anger may just be a manifestation of the cynicism with which Himes treats all of his characters and a reflection of the difficult world they live in. Yet some choices, like having Iris and Mabel tear each other’s clothes off as they fight over Deke (57), seem to indicate that Himes also sees women like Iris and Mabel as lustful objects instead of complex, fully formed characters.
