Manchild in the Promised Land

Who would've thought this medium-skinned candystore-robbing Harlem boy would've became an Ivy-league law student? Claude Brown tells his life story with honesty and open truth reminiscent of Miles Davis's autobiography. He discusses his encounters with girls, especially Sugar, who is ugly and has messed up teeth but still a certain charm about her, and his experiences at various reform schools. I found the relationship he had with his father to be especially interesting because of the constant rivalry they had. Claude also had lots of problems with drugs, especially heroin, cocaine and reefer. One admirable quality of Claude is that he holds none of this back and readily admits what he went through, no matter how ashamed he may have been. The gangs he rolled with are also interesting because of the way he often lead them, with an iron fist but still with a certain amount of care and mutual respect for every member. Also, Claude's life was positively influenced by jazz saxophone legends Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker (the Charlie Parker With Strings album is even mentioned. He gets high while listening to "Summertime"). Eventually, Claude gave up the street life and started playing piano for large amounts of time. He straightened his life out, and got out of the ghetto. Of course, being a lawyer isn't much of an improvement. It just is a safer way to make money. I read this book in 10th grade and was very motivated by it. Claude died recently, in February of 2002, which was a tragic loss. He truly was a great writer and is very missed.

Claude tells us without self pity, regret, or justification about his dangerous, difficult, violent childhood (if you can call it that) growing up in Harlem during the 1940s and 50s. In this narrative autobiography Claude or Sonny as he is known around Harlem and it's juvenile centers begins going down the wrong path at the age of seven (7). At this tender young age he began shooting hooky from school in order to hang out with the older kids who were going around fighting, stealing, and everything else. There were absolutely no good influences in the neighborhood during this time. Everyone was either selling drugs, using drugs, or thinking up schemes to cheat people out of their hard earned money. There is one paragraph that sums up the childhood that a child experienced during that time and it reads "There ain't no kids in Harlem. I ain't never seen any. I've seen some real small people actin' like kids. They were too small to be grown, and they might've looked like kids, but they don't have any kids in Harlem, because nobody has time for a childhood." " Kids are happy, kids laugh, kids are secure. They ain't scared-a nothin'. I don't never remember bein' happy and not scared." You will have to read MANCHILD IN THE PROMISED LAND to find out about about Sonny's childhood with his family and friends and his coming of age during a time where it's believed that kids didn't exist in Harlem. You should read this book because it will open your eyes to experiences that you may or may not know exist. While reading this book I was shown a glimpse of a life that I'm not sure I would be able to endure and I learned some things from Sonny. I'm sure if you read MANCHILD IN THE PROMISED LAND you will also learn something.

"Manchild in the Promised Land" is a rare achievement: an autobiography written in clear, lucid prose without an ounce of self-pity, self-justification, or moralizing. While Claude Brown's life was difficult, dangerous, and violent, and he shows all of that in unflinching detail, he also recalls much of his childhood with pleasure and a good measure of pride that he survived.
Most of all, for me, Brown's memoir is filled with regret for the many from his Harlem neighborhood who died, victims of crime, poverty, alcoholism and drug addiction. Indeed, one could say that one of the major characters of his story is heroin, which Brown describes as the scourge of his generation. The power of heroin to destroy is most poignantly described in Brown's recounting of his relationship with his younger brother. Claude took his responsibilities as an older brother seriously, but his younger brother fell victim to addiction, and Brown was forced to admit that he had lost him.
As the book develops, an interesting change occurs in Brown's narrative voice. In the early stages, he describes with a defiant pride his wild exploits as a child and adolescent, which landed him in juvenile homes, and nearly got him killed. As he describes himself getting older and he eventually leaves Harlem, Brown's voice takes on a mixture of affection and regret as he talks about going back to the neighborhood and seeing old friends, many of whom had fallen on hard times.
In the end, Brown's story is one of achievement. While he escapes the poverty of his youth, he refuses to forget his roots. In this sense, "Manchild"'s spiritual descendant is Sandra Cisneros' great novella, "The House on Mango Street," whose main character realizes that one must "go away to come back." Brown forges an inspirational story that overcomes despair in its power to shape memory and find meaning in a difficult life.

In Claude Brown's, "Manchild in the Promised Land", the author regales the reader with a starkly realistic portrayal of Harlem. The autobiography, written in narrative form, walks the reader through the childhood and early manhood of Sonny, Claude Brown. The writer pulls no punches as he hits the page with an intense anger of the circumstances that created the culture of Harlem in the 1940s and 1950s, and to great extent contribute to the same chaos today. Written in 1965, "Manchild in the Promised Land" could be referred to as a streetwise primer. It's clear, lucid prose gives unflinching detail to the black man's experience living in the ghetto. Brown recalls his childhood with pleasure and pride, a childhood defined by violence, crime and drug addiction. This honest pride is evidenced in many reverse values from "traditional" society, of those living outside the ghetto. Brown shows how these opposite values come about naturally, giving the living conditions, and how they become survival techniques that make sense. In the 1950s, no one actually lived in Harlem, they survived or died, according to Brown's account. Touted as the story of one who made it out of Harlem successfully, Claude Brown's "Manchild in the Promised Land" is the story of Sonny, a man who stands where a manchild ran.

This powerful memoir by an ex-street hustler is alternately raw, enlightening, harsh, hopeful, and depressing. Claude ¨Sonny¨ Brown (1937-2002) grew up stealing, fighting, scamming, playing hookey and dealing drugs - before he was a teen. So did many of his Harlem peers, in a community where role models were often junkies, thieves, whores and thugs. As a young boy Sonny disliked going inside for supper because he might miss something - like a fight or stabbing. And this was New York City in the late 1940's & early 1950's, when non-skilled jobs were more plentiful and black families more intact (Sonny lived with both parents). At 16 after stints in reformatories, Sonny quit hustling, got a job, and enrolled in night school (eventually becoming an attorney). Why the change? Sonny confesses maturity and fear - many of his criminal pals were dead, junkies, or in prison. But Sonny couldn't keep his brother from becoming a heroin addict nor serving time for armed robbery. Sonny also describes community players like the Coptic Church, Black Muslims, helpful counselors and ministers, plus negative street attitudes towards whites, Jews, and females (degraded even then as "B*tches").

Many credit Sonny for arising from his harsh ghetto upbringing. I do too, but cannot credit his contempt for his parents (who tried steering him straight) nor how his remorse extends to his dead & imprisoned predatory pals but seldom to his victims. This book arrived in 1965 as did another famous street memoir (Autobiography of Malcolm X), and just before Martin Luther King launched open housing marches in northern cities against often-fierce opposition by fearful working-class whites. Given the rampant crime and ghetto horrors described in these pages, some readers may find it hard not to sympathize with those whites - a sentiment others may disdain. What seems beyond debate is that this book is raw, depressing and powerful.

Claude Brown's slightly fictionalized autobiography recounts his childhood and early adulthood throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Manchild in the Promised Land also documents the changing atmosphere of Harlem and the people it affected. Brown tells stories of himself as a hell-raiser, involved in theft and drug dealing, and spending time in juvenile detention centers like Wiltwyck and Warwick. He was able to establish a feared and respected name for himself both among the streetwalkers of Harlem and the inmates of the reform schools. Lacking formal education (resulting from years of playing hooky) and idolizing the criminal elements around him, he seemed to be heading down a short road of vice and danger.

Only after Brown moved to Greenwich Village shortly before turning twenty was he able to begin viewing Harlem with a more objective eye, and see the factors that led him down the downward spiral he had been traveling. One of the main reasons Brown believes he and his friends were wrought with such violence and recklessness is due to the mentality imported by their parents from the South. The thing that mattered most to them was fighting: for one's money, girl/family, and manhood (Brown 260). He feels that that rural mentality had been brought to a crowded city life that was not only incompatible with the setting, but also destructive. He laments, "it seems as though if I had stayed in Harlem all my life, I might have never known that there was anything else to life other than sex, religion, liquor, and violence" (Brown 281).

As a youth, Brown excelled in these very base attributes. It wasn't until the introduction of heroine, or "horse," as it was first introduced in the early 1950s, that he feels Harlem truly became unable to cope with their values. Instead of young men fighting for honor, they were killing and robbing for money to sustain their overwhelming addictions, introducing more guns into the neighborhood with desperate people wielding them. He witnessed his friends begin to fade away into scratching, nodding junkies. However, by this time Brown was able to leave and slowly break away from the crumbling Harlem he once knew, watching from afar many of the individuals he once hustled with fall victim to the crimes they themselves would perpetrate.

Many opted instead to stay in Harlem and live the street life. He attributes this to the attitudes of whites outside Harlem and the racism they encountered. To live a "clean" life usually meant to work for a white man who underpaid, referred to them in a racially derogatory manner, and made them perform the most labor intensive tasks. When it came to these prospects, most understandably chose the life of a self-employed drug dealer in Harlem over the self-effacing menial work elsewhere, despite the danger (Brown 287).

Where some people turned to drugs or religion to deal with these problems, Brown found his calling through more established and secular means. Education and music became outlets for him to express himself, gain a self-pride through non-criminal means, and eventually lead to a promising career as a lawyer and author.

One of the things that make this autobiography interesting is its use of language. Brown writes in a notable street dialect, however, the language itself evolves with the character. For instance, "cat" slowly comes into use around page 67 and is used throughout, though it receives less use towards the end. More notably, on page 109 the young Claude begins idolizing a street pimp named Johnny: "To Johnny, every chick was a b*tch. Even mothers were b*tches." And so on page 114 Brown writes "Jackie was a beautiful black b*tch." From then on women are regularly referred to as "b*tches" until the character matures enough to treat women with more respect, and Johnny's spell seems to have completely worn off by the time Brown falls in love with a fellow student. Likewise, the sentence structures become less erratic and grow in sophistication as the book goes on, using less slang chapter by chapter when he begins to change. This seems to be by design.

Claude Brown's personal accounts are no doubt fictionalized to some degree, for his characters go on exhaustive speeches several times, and he certainly didn't tape record them for every word. However, Brown's intentions are to present Harlem and its difficulties in approachable and creative ways. To allow readers (such as white-suburban-me) an inside look into the ways of urban life it invites an understanding and, hopefully, sympathy for the situations of the junkies, prostitutes, and drug dealers that we pass on the street. He shows them in a way that cannot be easily neglected, in intimate, personal relationships that reveal the influences and regrets that have placed them in those situations. These factors were not unique to the 1940s and 1950s. They existed before and do so today. Brown allows insight into the hardships while telling an encouraging tale of one who made it out. By personal drive and education, through art and self-expression (as this book is), he shows that the situation is not dire, but attitudes must change before the world will follow.

This was without doubt the most important book I read as a teenager. I moved to NYC from California when I was twelve and was pretty naive in the workings of the city. Reading this book when I was 13 helped me immensely. It was a street-wise primer for survival at the time (we're talking 1964). But I would hold that the subject matter is just as relevant today. If you don't know about a "Jones" or what makes a three-card-monty mark want to come back for more, then I suggest you are just as vulnerable as I was. It's also one of the all-time cautionary tales (without being preachy) about drug addiction. I did a lot of drugs in the late 60's, early 70's, but never touched heroin, primarily from reading this book. The writing, while maybe not on the level of Richard Wright, surpasses Malcom X's and Eldridge Cleaver's memoirs, and that's saying something, as those were both powerful works as well.

This book for me is the most startling and important autobiography regarding black inner city life even when compared to Malcom X's. When I was a teenager growing up in the inner city in the eighties, the older black middle class generation spoke to us "youngbloods" as if we invented crime. The sickness of self hate, envy, disrespect in our community existed for a long time before it became fashionable to parade these ailments in front of mass media for profit. Manchild details these problems through a teenager growing up in the fourties in an inner city environment who luckily makes a turn for the better at the right time before becoming an adult. This is an American story, not just a black one, and one that details why blind conservative patriotism and easy fix liberal solutions still continue to be difficult to swallow for youth attempting to survive an institutionalized system designed to almost guarantee their failure in life.

Mr. Brown has written a novel that brings home to all that have been raised in a big city how some have it tougher than themselves. I was raised in the same era in Detroit but it was a different experience. Hard drugs had not arrived on the white streets yet. Crime was at the fringes of our society and some youths did, some didn't. At the conclusion of the novel I was sincerely touched as he thought of his friends that hadn't made it and the the ones that had. We all have surely had the same thoughts and I sometimes wonder of the few of us that did well in our lives how many of the others didn't receive the same breaks. They were still our friends, and would be today if we seen them. They live forever in our minds and hearts and we do hope for the best of a good life, at least close to what we have had but there are probably more sad storys than not,better we don't know the pain could be to great. A striking novel and I will recommend to all I know.

I am a teacher of freshman English at Florida State University. This semester I had the opportunity to teach a remedial English class that consisted of many students who had never read a book before. . .they were a tough and rugged bunch with a lot of undirected, raw energy. The course objective was to get them to become more comfortable with reading. It was a beautiful and incredible experience to watch Claude Brown humble them, and then turn them into anxious readers. When they began to discuss the book on days when we weren't scheduled to discuss it, I knew I was on to something--Manchild in the Promise Land is a must read. It changed mine and my student's lives. . .It's full of spirit, soul, and that raw primordial energy that moves us whether we like it or not.

Plain and simple... this is one of the best books I've ever read... This book reminds me of Down these means streets and the coldest winter ever... See This book talks about life on the streets from an African American... The Coldest Winter Ever talks about life on the streets from an African American Females perspective, and Down these mean Streets, talks about life on the streets from a Hispanic's perspective... Thats how they are all connected... Anyways... I couldn't keep my face out of this book... I am so inlove with this book. I recommend it to anyone... This book is bascially about the drug-fusion era... When drugs was first puton the streets. what it did, and the results...

Reading Man Child in the Promised land is inspiring. It is a story about hopelessness, and struggle. It is a story where a man who shouldn't go anywhere but to jail, or a one way road to hell finds his way out of Harlem, and makes to a law school. The book explains everything in detail though, it is sensed that Mr. Brown doesn't really regret what he did because it got him where it did, and as such is an inspiration for other black boys in the ghetto, knowing that they can amount to something better.
This is one of the few stories that brought me to tears for reasons other then sadness.

Throughout Brown's narrative you will experience the hardships of the ghetto life though a child's eyes. It is an inspirational story about a young man who ovecame a life of poverty and crime, and who later became a successful lawyer. Although this book was written from a black man's experiences' in the 1950's much of what he experienced still exist today. It will make you think about life, and the social and cultural situations that surround us today. This book will make have a meaningful impact on everyone who reads it.

I highly recommend this book. It tells the story of the post World War II Black American urban experience through the eyes of a very smart, confident Black 8 year old. In many ways this book reminds me of Mark Twain's Huck Finn. In both books, very clever, independent young American boys take the world as it is and they push to assert themselves and they are man child's with a great sense of adventure.

While other reviewers have noted the harsh, violent incidents of the book, I felt it was more balanced. Claude Brown's New York City of the 1940s and 1950s was certainly a rough place, especially when hard drugs were coming in, but it was also tough and loving in a good way. Claude Brown had tough teachers in his public school that cared about him and there was also a truant officer that would chase after Claude and the other boys who were skipping school. This White truant officer was one of my favorite characters in the book and Claude took great interest in him as a very important enemy. Claude cautioned the other boys who wanted to skip not to try to outrun this White truant officer - because he had great foot-speed (got to admire a White guy with the courage to out run and chase down and catch Black boys in their own Harlem neighborhood :-)

I also enjoyed seeing the different Black cultural mix in Harlem from Blacks in the rural South to street savvy urban Blacks. Claude Brown's father isn't in to politics or hustling, he came to the city for economic opportunities and generally respects the social order of police, teachers, job bosses. Claude's father used to have to beat little Claude to get him to go to school, then later in life Claude wants to go to do graduate school work instead of taking down a steady paying job. This just doesn't fit with the country values of Claude's father.

In any event, this book takes you into the heart and soul of Black urban America and it isn't propaganda - it shows Black American culture with all of it's dirty laundry. The ghetto can be a rough place, we need good, strong tough people to clean up these places and make them safe, good places for smart, adventuresome boys like Claude or a Huck Finn.

Survivor I Changed The Rules Part 1

Now at the age of 38 years old as I think back upon the day I set eyes upon Manchild in the Promised Land for the first time I'm brought back to the age of 17 when I'm incarcerrated. The book served as an uncompromising indictment of society and my choices, and how they both failed me.
Mr. Brown like myself, lived a very rough life, and it was through the navigation of the day to day hysteria that lessons were to be learned. This title was the first of its kind in my life up to this point which caused me to look at myself real closely and wonder what my life was to become.
Like my autobiography "Survivor" I Changed the Rules Part 1, Mr. Browns life story is inspiring, and disturbing, but too real to be ignored.
This was a very great read! for almost close two decades I can honestly say i've read the book atleast 8 times.

I read this book a little while before Claude Brown passed away. I loved this book. I also read his book, Children of the Ham, and I found this book in my closet. Truly a lost treasure. I loved this book. It was so real. It's like I could see him living his life just the way he described it. I suggest everybody- no matter whether you're black, white, purple, green -read this book. Youwill not be disappointed. Trust me.

Claude Brown gives a wonderful account of the struggles of growing up in a city such as New York. This book is recommended to anyone who isn't afraid to see that their pristine vision of their surroundings is not what they think, or that someone can struggle through their childhood and still come out on top. One of my favorite books.

At the beginning of Manchild, Claude Brown describes how Harlem came to be populated by people of color. He continues by describing how he struggled with and adapted to this enviornment and eventually escaped it. This reads like a story of alienation and exile and the author's struggle to find the place where he fit and was comfortable.
I enjoyed reading this book, but was left wondering if Claude Brown ever found his niche. Where did he land? Did he ever find a place that felt like home? He talks at the very end about how much he loved the street life of Harlem, but that he hadn't lived there for several years at the time of writing.
I'd like an update of where the Manchild is now, what he's doing and how Harlem looks to him 50 years later---a sequel perhaps?

This book is a masterpiece. I purchased this to replace my last two copies that disappeared . . . I first read this at the age of 13! At 54 years old, it remains on my book list and will always have a place in my bookcase! Yes; I STILL own two of them!

Claude Brown's "Manchild in the Promised Land" is an American story, a story of urban community, living in it and surviving it. It's street life pure and simple, how one grows and survives in it, and if fortunate breaks free of it. To this day I do not understand why this has not become a movie or even a movie series. The story is more than that good.

This book started what I would like to believe as my introduction to adult reading at the age of 18. I could not put it down because captured the experience of a black child in a timeless caption of America. You understood the impact of one person on hiself and even those around him. You will never forget the unrelenting love he had for "Pimp." The love that only an older sibling could have for a younger sibling. Buy it! Then read "Down These Mean Streets."

Manchild in a Promised Land is one of those books that really makes you think about it even while you're not reading it. And when you are reading it, you are so completely enthralled within it, just waiting to see what is going to happen next in Sonny's life, that you feel like you are being carried away to another time and place. You feel like you are looking at life in Harlem through Sonny's eyes.

This beautiful piece of work was written in 1965, but seems to flow from the pages of yesterday's NY Times. I've purchased adleast 30 copies and just given them away-It rivals anything done by Baldwin, Wright or Ellison. Manchild is an ideal introduction to the world of words and must reading for the planet Earth!

Claude Brown's gritty autobiography is one that you can read again and again. I read in fifth grade and two times since. A dynamic history lesson and insight to the souls of many middle-aged African-American men.

Claude Brown's gritty autobiography is one that you can read again and again. I read in fifth grade and two times since. A dynamic history lesson and insight to the souls of many middle-aged African-American men.

I initially read this book as an undergraduate student in college years ago. Loved it then, despite the sometimes foul language. Here it is 15 years later and I like it more, especially when compared with the contemporary Black so-called writers.