Lot of 3 Vintage Paperbacks: Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown Manchild in the Promised Land is indeed one of the most remarkable autobiographies of our time. This thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown's childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem 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 the book was 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. Here is the story about the one who "made it," the boy who kept landing on his feet and became a man. "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." ?Norman Mailer Copyright 1965 Claude Brown / Signet Books / Paperback, 429 pages Pages in unmarked condition. Cover has some wear to edges and corners. Some creasing, scuffing and discoloration. _____________________ Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin In the Deep South of the 1950s, journalist John Howard Griffin decided to cross the color line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity-that in this new millennium still has something important to say to every American. 1960s Edition / Signet Books / Paperback, 208 pages Pages in unmarked condition. Inside cover has large owner inscription. Cover has wear to edges and corners. Cover has creasing, chipping, indentations and small blemishes. _____________________ The W.A.S.P. by Julius Horwitz In The W.A.S.P., Horwitz turns to Harlem as a circle of white liberals recount their interactions with "Emerson," a Harvard-educated African-American who, after dropping out of Yale Divinity School, takes a job as a "storefront minister" on 118th street. Horwitz draws on his own experiences as a welfare worker to breath life into Emerson, a brooding intellectual who considers Harlem's residents to be essentially "dead" and thinks of their children as "little monsters." Unique in tone and structure, the book moves between standard 3rd-person narration and letters written by Emerson himself--most of which are angry indictments of America's ongoing failure to address the politics of race interspersed with painful, moving and sometimes unsettling accounts. a Raw delivery of a uniquely American experience. 1968, 2nd Printing / Bantam Books (N3859) / Paperback, 215 pages Pages in unmarked condition. Cover has some minor wear to edges and corners. Cover has some creasing and blemishes. BLACK HISTORY - BLACK VOICES - AFRICAN-AMERICAN ISSUES - BIPOC