Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown Born in 1937 in Harlem, New York, Claude Brown spent his childhood "roaming the streets with junkies, whores, pimps, hustlers, the 'mean cats' and the numbers runners" (Brown in Stine and Marowski, p. 33)....

Manchild in the Promised Land (1965) is an autobiographical novel written by Claude Brown. It tells about the author's coming of age amidst poverty and violence in Harlem during the 1940s and 1950s and has frequently appeared on banned book...

Shyne was set up to take over the throne, as one of Brooklyn's finest. But those were big shoes to fill - no pun intended. With that voice, we longed for the same depth and wisdom, and verbal gymnastics. Yeah, he gave us cocky, sure,...

 One day when Pamela Samuels-Young was 12 and growing up in Compton, she pulled a copy of Claude Brown’s “Manchild in the Promised Land” from her aunt’s bookshelf. She was so impressed with the gritty story of an African-American boy her own age growing up...

The book came to me along with the summer's meager trickle of new offerings, at a time when publishers seem to be lying low, waiting to spring their really important fall lists on the world: Manchild in the Promised Land, by Claude Brown. Though it came with a benediction by Irving Howe, I put it aside, thinking it was just another book by an angry young Negro. There is no doubt that Negroes have much to be angry about, and I am all for anger, righteous or otherwise. Not hate, but anger. There is roo...

Claude Brown's story of growing up in Harlem deals at great length with juvenile crime, the life in the streets, poverty, the curtailment of schooling, changes in the attitudes of Negroes toward themselves and toward whites, the role of the Black Muslims among the poor, and so forth. These are all issues of public concern, and this fact has been reflected in the way [Manchild in the Promised Land] has been praised and criticized. It has been called "a major American autobiography," �...

Claude Brown's "Manchild in the Promised Land" is the autobiography of a young man who grew up in Harlem. It is a Pilgrim's Progress through the deadly realities of the 28-year-old author's childhood and youth during the 1940's and 1950's. It brings to sharp focus and vivid life the desolations and survivals of his contemporaries during that dark night of the Negro soul. It is written with brutal and unvarnished honesty in the plain talk of the people, in lan...