“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.