Manchild in the Promised Land Paperback – December 27, 2011

I read this book when I was a kid, and bought for my grandson. It's a good book about ups and downs in the inner city.

Love the book

Manchild In The Promised Land is, unlike Tookie's diatribe, the real deal.A facinating insight into the lifestyle and politics that dumped so many of our minority communities into a civil rights wasteland of tragedy, economic strangulation, academic failure and political correctness.A classic that deserves to be on every young person's reading list. It is a message that has meaning in Beverly Hills and in the Bronx.The author is one of the very few who can write the story in the first person, but, with the enhanced vision of someone who has risen above the narrow confines of his neighborhood to experience the best of American education.What is especially refreshing within this tragedy is that the author is content to tell the story without seeking to shakedown your pocketbook or heart. The net effect is of course to create a much deeper sadness for those who experience the "inner city".For those on the inside it gives a glimpse of the exerience of someone who breaks free, but whose heart remains attached. For those who have never experienced streets where people avoid eye contact and yet are always alert for the next threat and the elderly and infirmed only venture out in the middle of the day this is the painful, tragic reality.

U read this book many years ago and enjoyed reading it again

I first read Manchild in the Promise Land when I was sixteen. At fifty-six - I have finished reading the book for a second time. From a child's eyes this book showed me why one should never use drugs and I never did. From an adults view it taught me how to deal with a family member that is actually using drugs. This is one of the best books ever written on young-boy's street life. In and out of boys homes, poverty, seeing his best friends drugged, this book should be required reading for all young male and females. It even teaches readers the transverse of some males into homosexuality, and his acceptance of this shocking revelation in the black community is honestly portrayed.Just when it seemed that Sonny was headed towards the destructive path his friends were on, he pulled himself out, which is surprising because Sonny was the baddest kid in his community. I think mentors like group home professional, Papanek and his mother paved the way for Sonny to have optimism in life. It was sad to see that when Sonny got out of the boys home, he actually missed being there. Once home, he'd actually get on the "jail bus" to go back to the home, if for nothing else to have a conversation with his mentors.His young love relationship with a girl that ended up on Heroin was very touching to me. "Nodding" was not something Sonny wanted to see any of his friends or loved ones do and when he sees his brother Pimp nodding for the first time, that literally changed my life. This was and always will be the book that kept me from ever using or sampling drugs.  Manchild in the Promised Land I even had an inkling to what street life was about. It's Claude Brown and Manchild in the Promise Land. Kudos to you my brother. May you rest in peace.

Although this book was written in the 1960s, it is, still, very relevant today. This book was recommended to me back in 1983 or 1984 when I was in the military. I bought it with a number of other books. It took me twenty years to read it. I should have read it alot sooner; but, the rigors of life and the fact that a good many other books I bought kept pushing this one further back on the reading list. I grew up in the streets of NYC and saw his life being played out in a number of guys and gals I hung out with at that time. I didn't get caught up in the drug scene nor in the gangsta scene but, like the author, there was a lot going on outside the walls of the house to keep me outside nearly all day. Yeah this world was much newer for me then rather than now but I had to see what was going on within and without my neighborhood. As a parent looking at my kid, I know this world is new to them, which I can't shelter them from. As my kids look at me as their parent, they are constantly telling me to get out of their way. I want to see what is going out there. This only helps me to keep life real for them with a dose of non-reality here and there. Fortunately for Claude Brown, the street made him wise and through his book some of us can reminesce about those days and explain to others what urban life was like for us and how it made us what we are today. For others who have not experienced this urban lifestyle, take the book for what it is and re-evaluate your own experiences in hopes of passing on a reality check of your own life to your children.

This book use to be white I believe. 1st read this in high school. My teacher fought so hard for this book and I'm happy she did. She always tried to teach us about our real history and not the fake history in school text books. (This book maybe partially fictional)She said it's hard for people to want more for themselves if they can't see people like them doing was once great things. She would say you guys are seeking for greatness. She wanted us to see what potential we had. I want to thank her for that. I had always wanted more out of life bc of her.Now my son is the same age I was in high school. Boy do I feel old.But it's a well written book for everyone to read.

Thomas Sowell, who grew up in Harlem about the same time, says that growing up he never heard a gunshot in Harlem.I'm not discounting anything Mr. Sowell says but I think Mr. Claude Brown's Harlem of the 40s, 50s, and 60s is a more apt description of how things were going down.One of the best books on the redemption of youth I've ever read. One of the best books of the 20th century.

An excellent insight into life in Harlem in the 50's. So well written, you could almost be there. I am a white English man aged 75.

Really interesting read. You can almost see the decline of Harlem thru Claude Brown's eyes

A great read

First read this book in 1973 when I was a teenager hitching in the US. Found it again while browsing so decided to revisit. Surprised how well it stood up and chilled by how the Harlem heroin experience, described by Claude Brown as ‘the plague’, mirrored Dublin’s experience in the ‘80s and ‘90s. A little disjointed towards the end, it remains, nonetheless, a book anyone should read for an insight into the black urban experience in the ‘50s and the painful transition from rural southern poverty to urban northern poverty.

I can truely visualise the dept of scope of Harlem and the survival of the fittest in the vicious circle in inner city NYC. This book is one of the most politically rich yet funny which reflects the struggle of mainly Black youths in Harlem. Claude has done an excellant job! WELL DONE