Now a Scribner Classic, this landmark publication and 1965 bestseller chronicles the author’s harrowing childhood of violent crime and poverty in Harlem—and has been widely celebrated as a classic of American literature by the lions of the literary world, including Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer.
One of the most remarkable autobiographies of our time, Manchild in the Promised Land is the thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem. It has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s. When first published in 1965, it was praised for its realistic portrayal of Harlem—the children, young people, hardworking parents; the hustlers, drug dealers, prostitutes, and numbers runners; the police; the violence, sex, and humor.
The book continues to resonate generations later, not only because of its fierce and dignified anger, not only because the struggles of urban youth are as deeply felt today as they were in Brown’s time, but also because the book is affirmative and inspiring and still rings true today.
About the Author
Claude Brown was born in New York City and grew up in Harlem. At age seventeen, after serving several terms in reform school, he left Harlem for Greenwich Village. He went on to receive a bachelor's degree from Howard University and attended law school. He also wrote a book called The Children of Ham in 1976. Manchild in the Promised Land evolved from an article he published in Dissent magazine during his first year at college. He died in 2002 at the age of 64.
About the illustrator
Nathan McCall, author of Makes Me Wanna Holler, has worked as a journalist for The Washington Post. Currently, he teaches in the African American Studies Department at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Industry Reviews
Daniel A. Poling Brown's Harlem is alive in a way that no black ghetto has heretofore been brought to life between book jackets. Nat Hentoff "Book Week" Sprung from the alley, a rare cat...As a survivor among the dying and the dead, Brown tells it like it was-and like it still is. "Atlanta Journal" He writes about his life -- and Harlem -- with frank, brutal, and beautiful power. Mr. Brown's graphic narrative will make you laugh, cry, think, and possibly understand. Dick Schaap "Books" This is a magnificent book, not a good book, not an interesting book, a magnificent book....It is a guided tour of hell conducted by a man who broke out. Tom Wolfe "Manchild in the Promised Land" is Claude Brown's unforgettable epic of growing up as a boy on the streets of Harlem. His Zola-esque gift for slices of life is made all the more striking by his brilliant insights into character and social pressures. Tom Wolfe "New York Herald Tribune" Incredible! No Negro writer ever told the whole street thing in Harlem: Claude Brown is the first. James Baldwin A tremendous achievement. Norman Mailer The first thing I ever read which gave me an idea of what it would be like day by day if I'd grown up in Harlem. Romulus Linney "The New York Times Book Review" It is written with brutal and unvarnished honesty in the plain talk of the people, in language that is fierce, uproarious, obscene and tender. William Mathes "Los Angeles Times" Sometimes a unique voice speaks out so clearly and with so much passion that it comes to speak for an era, a generation, a people...and we have to listen.
