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haitianrich's review against another edition
4.0
This book was eye opening. for as many books that have been written by black authors about this period, Manchild reveals that many of the things plaguing Harlem pre gentrification were going on even "way back" in the 50's.
frodomom214's review against another edition
4.0
Why do I read books that break my heart? Because I need to know, I guess. An excellent story that explains how so many people never get a chance to make it.
jakennedy's review against another edition
4.0
Manchild in a Promised Land is all the things reviewers say: important, a real look at urban street life and the pain it inflicts. But it's also true it's not necessarily well-structured and you could argue the main character is not very likable.
The story chronicles Claude's youth and how difficult it was to grow up in Harlem for a young black male in the 40's,50's,and 60's. By the end, you can feel how the roots of slavery, poverty, institutional racism impact him. It's more meaningful education than any history class can offer.
The story chronicles Claude's youth and how difficult it was to grow up in Harlem for a young black male in the 40's,50's,and 60's. By the end, you can feel how the roots of slavery, poverty, institutional racism impact him. It's more meaningful education than any history class can offer.
bobbieshiann's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
5.0
“Before the soreness of the cotton fields had left Mama’s back, her knees were getting sore from scrubbing “Goldberg’s” floor. Nevertheless, she was better off; she had gone from the fire into the frying pan”.
“The children of the disillusioned colored pioneers inherited the total lot of their parents—the disappointments, the anger. To add to their misery, they had little hope of deliverance. For where does one run to when he’s already in the promised land?”
Set in Harlem, New York, Claude Brown, aka Sonny, weaves through the streets, disclosing why there was never a promise land in America. Why the ending of slavery did not uplift the Black community but instead relocated them and introduced them to new troubles such as drugs, violence, and broken homes clustered into small neighborhoods with the hope of making ends meet to feed their children and pay rent. While Claude was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, his parents were previous sharecroppers who could never connect with the changes of the world as his mother appeared unrealistic and his father rained down abuse that seemed never-ending.
Though Claude was not encouraged to be in the streets, it was where he got his education in life. Where he got into so much mischief, he was shot by 13, ran over by a bus, stole numerous times, ditched school, and understood what consumption of alcohol could do to you, but at this age, 13 was grown. By the age of 11, he had been put in reform school and continued in and out of the system while he developed a need to pay for his welfare, so stealing evolved into dealing drugs and being a con man.
All his life, Claude walked around with a mask on, pretending to be someone he was not because of fear. He was taught to view women as bitches, run trains on them, and accept that girls his age were turning tricks to survive. Though unconfirmed, his first true love was Sugar, a girl too ugly to like but one he couldn’t ignore. Through Claude’s friendships, we understand the height of drugs in Harlem, religion, and how friendships die out when you're trying to shift your own direction.
Many of Sonny’s friends couldn’t kick the habit or the need to commit crimes as heroin took over the streets of Harlem. Though he tried, Sonny hated the feeling, but it didn’t stop him from using drugs completely (cocaine, duji). He watched heroin take the lives of so many and witnessed them lose themselves as people like his own brother Pimp and Sugar became addicted. Even so, there were good people in his corner, like his friend Danny and psychologist Ernest Papanek.
Sonny made it out of Harlem without a rap sheet but never thought of thought more of himself. Sonny shows us the shift in times as trends come and changes and movements invade the streets. He talks about religion, the Black Panther Party, learning the piano, moving out of Harlem, venturing into different jobs, returning to school, and updates on his friends, and it all happened before the age of 23. Sonny died in 2002, and though Harlem, New York, is not the same, there is still no promise land.
lsm's review against another edition
5.0
This was assigned reading for me in college. I don't remember the class or the professor but I certainly remember this book. I loved it. I've always been disappointed that it's not better known. Read this book and pass it on...
radiantrox's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
lpm100's review against another edition
3.0
Confabulated stream of consciousness
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2020
I know that this book has been in print a long time, and it has been suggested that it was a "classic."
And so that prompted me to read it just so that I could say I had.
After I finished it, I came away with several thoughts:
1. The events are just a little bit too unlikely.
a. An eight-year-old gone from home for weeks at a time/hit by a bus / thrown into the river / hit by a car/ beaten with a chain? (p.12)
b. Drinking as a 6 year old? (And remembering it?) 11 years of street life experienceat seventeen, and therefore starting from 6 years old? (p.161)
c. A brother with the name "Pimp"?
d. (p.31) Characters talking like what no-acting Halle Berry does in her slave movie-roles? ("Gettin' mannish with a little high yaller girl.") At, what, 9 years old?
f. Being introduced to many books about people (by Mrs Cohen), even though just a few chapters earlier he said that he couldn't read. And given that he spent a total of 6 hours in school up until the age of 15 (p.156), how likely was that?
g. (p 155, 100). Black guys that are not interested in white ladies? Or at least curious? it's also somewhat confusing, because he did have the relationship with Jewish Judy. And it was the best one in the book.
h. He was able to play jazz piano after 6 months? Um, okay.
2. The recall ability is just a little bit too hard to believe.
Brown wrote this book when he was about 27 years old, and he has all of this instant recall of just about EVERY SINGLE WORD from conversations that happened 17 years ago.
3. The reading / organization is generally pretty poor. It feels like stream-of-consciousness writing. The characters just come in and out with no introductions and nor really proper exits. Excessive overuse of the word "cat" and a certain self-referential racial slur that black people like to use.
4. Claude Brown walks a very fine line between being interesting and being dislikeable.
Let him tell it, he has made a name for himself at 14 years old. (Everybody is afraid of him, and so he doesn't have to knock out her tooth to make a point. [p 139.]) And he knows how to teach everybody everything. And he knows how to come in contact with people who can teach him all of the tough stuff.
Remember that all of this purported hard stuff that he did was before he was 16 (i.e., old enough to go to jail), and so he didn't actually have the experience of doing Hard Time.
******
The book could also be read in many other ways:
1. A retelling of the story of some number of black people in a Northern City that get along just fine with everybody, and then it is ruined by Southern Blacks.
(If you want to read that story, a better choice would be "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," by Thomas Sowell. And that is because even if I was only 5% sure that it happened in the way that Thomas Sowell documented that it did, that is 5 times more certain than I am sure that *any* of these events happened in a way even close to what the author said.)
More generally, it could be the story of some black people having problems in one place and bringing them with them to the new place. In that case, the opportunities for comparison are boundless.
Brown repeatedly mentions the South, even though his parents had been gone from there for 25 years. He says (p.268) that "This was the sort of Life they had lived on the plantations. They were trying to bring the down-home live up to Harlem."
2. It could be read as a window into people who have the mental illness that leads to excessive recidivism. (I have a number of relatives/acquaintances who stay in and out of jail, and they cycle back so much that I can only conclude that..... They just like it because it's the way they're made up.)
The author kept cycling in between reform school / prison, even though sitting in a nice comfortable classroom has to have been better than that.
3. It could be a real life example of do-gooder white people who are using black people as self-actualization therapy.
a. There were examples of all of these volunteers coming from places like Austria and Norway and working with these inmates in the way that somebody volunteers to work with animals in a zoo.
b. A lot of these reform schools were pet projects of people such as Eleanor Roosevelt. None of them was able to successfully complete their experiment, and they are all closed as of about 40 years ago.
4. It could be read as an example of the romanticized way that white people like to envision "inner city" black people. (Several million copies of this book are in print, and I suspect that real "inner city people" didn't purchase a single copy.)
5. It could be read as a long chronicle of the acedia that happens when people fall out of their element. (In this case, it is Southern blacks moving North.) It has been observed before that "the emancipated Jew is more frustrated than the ghetto Jew. And that the segregated negro is much less frustrated than the one that is trying to assimilate."
**********
There are quite a few strange characters here.
1. The cliched Troubled Inner City Youth.
2. The black Anti-semite. (p.272).
3. The black people creating strange religions. In this book, Black Copts and things that have resonances with later Hebrew Israelites. Also, the beginnings of the Nation of Islam.
4. Black Egyptologists.
5. Black Muslims. (All of chapter 14. The upshot is that Prislam is not at all new.)
6. Real life people from that era. (Father Divine. Adam Clayton Powell. Elijah Muhammad.)
Verdict: Not worth a second read. I don't exactly regret having read it, but I just didn't get that much out of it.
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2020
I know that this book has been in print a long time, and it has been suggested that it was a "classic."
And so that prompted me to read it just so that I could say I had.
After I finished it, I came away with several thoughts:
1. The events are just a little bit too unlikely.
a. An eight-year-old gone from home for weeks at a time/hit by a bus / thrown into the river / hit by a car/ beaten with a chain? (p.12)
b. Drinking as a 6 year old? (And remembering it?) 11 years of street life experienceat seventeen, and therefore starting from 6 years old? (p.161)
c. A brother with the name "Pimp"?
d. (p.31) Characters talking like what no-acting Halle Berry does in her slave movie-roles? ("Gettin' mannish with a little high yaller girl.") At, what, 9 years old?
f. Being introduced to many books about people (by Mrs Cohen), even though just a few chapters earlier he said that he couldn't read. And given that he spent a total of 6 hours in school up until the age of 15 (p.156), how likely was that?
g. (p 155, 100). Black guys that are not interested in white ladies? Or at least curious? it's also somewhat confusing, because he did have the relationship with Jewish Judy. And it was the best one in the book.
h. He was able to play jazz piano after 6 months? Um, okay.
2. The recall ability is just a little bit too hard to believe.
Brown wrote this book when he was about 27 years old, and he has all of this instant recall of just about EVERY SINGLE WORD from conversations that happened 17 years ago.
3. The reading / organization is generally pretty poor. It feels like stream-of-consciousness writing. The characters just come in and out with no introductions and nor really proper exits. Excessive overuse of the word "cat" and a certain self-referential racial slur that black people like to use.
4. Claude Brown walks a very fine line between being interesting and being dislikeable.
Let him tell it, he has made a name for himself at 14 years old. (Everybody is afraid of him, and so he doesn't have to knock out her tooth to make a point. [p 139.]) And he knows how to teach everybody everything. And he knows how to come in contact with people who can teach him all of the tough stuff.
Remember that all of this purported hard stuff that he did was before he was 16 (i.e., old enough to go to jail), and so he didn't actually have the experience of doing Hard Time.
******
The book could also be read in many other ways:
1. A retelling of the story of some number of black people in a Northern City that get along just fine with everybody, and then it is ruined by Southern Blacks.
(If you want to read that story, a better choice would be "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," by Thomas Sowell. And that is because even if I was only 5% sure that it happened in the way that Thomas Sowell documented that it did, that is 5 times more certain than I am sure that *any* of these events happened in a way even close to what the author said.)
More generally, it could be the story of some black people having problems in one place and bringing them with them to the new place. In that case, the opportunities for comparison are boundless.
Brown repeatedly mentions the South, even though his parents had been gone from there for 25 years. He says (p.268) that "This was the sort of Life they had lived on the plantations. They were trying to bring the down-home live up to Harlem."
2. It could be read as a window into people who have the mental illness that leads to excessive recidivism. (I have a number of relatives/acquaintances who stay in and out of jail, and they cycle back so much that I can only conclude that..... They just like it because it's the way they're made up.)
The author kept cycling in between reform school / prison, even though sitting in a nice comfortable classroom has to have been better than that.
3. It could be a real life example of do-gooder white people who are using black people as self-actualization therapy.
a. There were examples of all of these volunteers coming from places like Austria and Norway and working with these inmates in the way that somebody volunteers to work with animals in a zoo.
b. A lot of these reform schools were pet projects of people such as Eleanor Roosevelt. None of them was able to successfully complete their experiment, and they are all closed as of about 40 years ago.
4. It could be read as an example of the romanticized way that white people like to envision "inner city" black people. (Several million copies of this book are in print, and I suspect that real "inner city people" didn't purchase a single copy.)
5. It could be read as a long chronicle of the acedia that happens when people fall out of their element. (In this case, it is Southern blacks moving North.) It has been observed before that "the emancipated Jew is more frustrated than the ghetto Jew. And that the segregated negro is much less frustrated than the one that is trying to assimilate."
**********
There are quite a few strange characters here.
1. The cliched Troubled Inner City Youth.
2. The black Anti-semite. (p.272).
3. The black people creating strange religions. In this book, Black Copts and things that have resonances with later Hebrew Israelites. Also, the beginnings of the Nation of Islam.
4. Black Egyptologists.
5. Black Muslims. (All of chapter 14. The upshot is that Prislam is not at all new.)
6. Real life people from that era. (Father Divine. Adam Clayton Powell. Elijah Muhammad.)
Verdict: Not worth a second read. I don't exactly regret having read it, but I just didn't get that much out of it.
snowgray's review against another edition
2.0
This is the book for a student who *can* read but has trouble finding a book to stick with. At just over 400 pages, this will be a challenging read for any reader with low stamina, though the vocabulary is accessible. Rife with swear words and violence, the author tells the story of his juvenile delinquency, up through his decision to go to college and escape Harlem. He paints a vivid picture of his confusion as a youngster, followed by the fear and eventual disillusionment that he experiences as he grows older. His stories are thrilling. He was shot when he was only thirteen, and began stealing when he was five; the book includes realistic but humorous descriptions of several ways to steal.
Unfortunately, many anecdotes seem to repeat over and over again: "I knew this guy" "We had a fight" "That junkie died..." The book would have been more compelling had it been more rigorously edited. Furthermore, the narrator becomes increasingly unreliable as more and more of his acquaintances seem to fawn over him more than speaking to him as an equal. The author's reasons for leaving Harlem are not illustrated for at least the first half of the book, which seems to glorify crime; a student who gives up on the book without finishing it (and, as I said, it is long and prone to being abandoned) will miss the main lesson it imparts.
Please be aware that a commercial audiobook is not available, though Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic has a downloadable version.
Unfortunately, many anecdotes seem to repeat over and over again: "I knew this guy" "We had a fight" "That junkie died..." The book would have been more compelling had it been more rigorously edited. Furthermore, the narrator becomes increasingly unreliable as more and more of his acquaintances seem to fawn over him more than speaking to him as an equal. The author's reasons for leaving Harlem are not illustrated for at least the first half of the book, which seems to glorify crime; a student who gives up on the book without finishing it (and, as I said, it is long and prone to being abandoned) will miss the main lesson it imparts.
Please be aware that a commercial audiobook is not available, though Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic has a downloadable version.