From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a powerful autobiographical novel about a black family tortured by colorism as it strives to live up to the myth of the Black middle class in white, post-war America Lillian Taylor is obsessed with middle-class respectability. Despite the fact that her parents were enslaved, she is possessed by the delusion that her ancestors were white. But she's married to a dark-skinned man and ridicules him mercilessly for his complexion. After one bitter incident sullies Mr. Taylor's reputation, he is forced to resign his job at a small Black college in Missouri and move his family elsewhere--the first of several relocations that strain things further. Caught in the middle of this dysfunction is Charles, the youngest of three boys, who is left alone with their scornful mother after his brothers manage to escape. As their situation becomes ever more precarious, Charles becomes the focus of his mother's domineering attention, resulting in an inability to fit into either black or white society. When Charles succumbs to a self-ruin borne of this struggle, it embodies the tragic failures of his fractured family.

Drawn from Himes's own childhood and adolescence, The Third Generation is a devastating look into the ghastly effects of internalized racism and the rage that erupts from America's failed promises.