Lost in the Stacks: Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown

Manchild in the Promised Land (call # 305.896 BRO) is the remarkable memoir of Claude Brown’s youth growing up in Harlem during the 1940’s and 1950’s. A bestseller when it was published in 1965, this book has unfortunately fallen off the reading lists of too many people. Brown takes us to a world where drugs and violence rule the day and to survive required one to be street smart and fearless. It is also a story rooted in the great migration north of millions of African-Americans who left the rural south for the urban north. An interesting cultural divide is documented between the parents, who grew up in the south and took part in the migration, and their children who were born and raised in the north. This is a great book not to be missed.