Wimbey’s Corner

Wimbey’s Corner is a novel centered in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois during the early 1940s. Most of its characters reside in Wimbey’s Corner, a small Black neighborhood owned by Eskeridge Wimbey, a wealthy Black man. The book’s principal characters are Eskeridge Wimbey; Wayne Hunter, who moved to Chicago from Kentucky; Mackenzie Sweet, who aspires to be the world’s oldest Negro; Claude Bonfils, a prince of Chicago pimps; Electra Wenders, a single mother; and Tommy Brown, a sailor. Much of the book’s tension arises from the question of whether Wayne is the right kind of resident for the corner, and how that question plays out in the lives of the principal characters and other residents of Evanston and Chicago during WWII.