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Title: Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown ISBN: 0-684-86418-5 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.78 (37 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Taught me about Life on the streets
Comment: This was without doubt the most important book I read as a teenager. I moved to NYC from California when I was twelve and was pretty naive in the workings of the city. Reading this book when I was 13 helped me immensely. It was a street-wise primer for survival at the time (we're talking 1964). But I would hold that the subject matter is just as relevant today. If you don't know about a "Jones" or what makes a three-card-monty mark want to come back for more, then I suggest you are just as vulnerable as I was. It's also one of the all-time cautionary tales (without being preachy) about drug addiction. I did a lot of drugs in the late 60's, early 70's, but never touched heroin, primarily from reading this book. The writing, while maybe not on the level of Richard Wright, surpasses Malcom X's and Eldridge Cleaver's memoirs, and that's saying something, as those were both powerful works as well.
Rating: 4
Summary: Promised Land or Exile?
Comment: At the beginning of Manchild, Claude Brown describes how Harlem came to be populated by people of color. He continues by describing how he struggled with and adapted to this enviornment and eventually escaped it. This reads like a story of alienation and exile and the author's struggle to find the place where he fit and was comfortable.
I enjoyed reading this book, but was left wondering if Claude Brown ever found his niche. Where did he land? Did he ever find a place that felt like home? He talks at the very end about how much he loved the street life of Harlem, but that he hadn't lived there for several years at the time of writing.
I'd like an update of where the Manchild is now, what he's doing and how Harlem looks to him 50 years later---a sequel perhaps?
Rating: 5
Summary: The Greatest of the 20th Century American Autubiographies
Comment: This book for me is the most startling and important autobiography regarding black inner city life even when compared to Malcom X's. When I was a teenager growing up in the inner city in the eighties, the older black middle class generation spoke to us "youngbloods" as if we invented crime. The sickness of self hate, envy, disrespect in our community existed for a long time before it became fashionable to parade these ailments in front of mass media for profit. Manchild details these problems through a teenager growing up in the fourties in an inner city environment who luckily makes a turn for the better at the right time before becoming an adult. This is an American story, not just a black one, and one that details why blind conservative patriotism and easy fix liberal solutions still continue to be difficult to swallow for youth attempting to survive an institutionalized system designed to almost guarantee their failure in life.
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Title: Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas ISBN: 0679781420 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X ISBN: 0345350685 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1989 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America by Nathan McCall ISBN: 0679740708 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 February, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin ISBN: 0440330076 Publisher: Laurel Pub. Date: 01 November, 1985 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver ISBN: 038533379X Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 01 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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