Summary
This modern classic is "a tough, tender, bitter novel of a black girl struggling towards womanhood" in 1930s Harlem--with a foreword by James Baldwin (Publishers Weekly).
Depression-era Harlem is home for twelve-year-old Francie Coffin and her family, and it's both a place of refuge and the source of untold dangers for her and her poor, working class family. The beloved "daddy" of the title indeed becomes a number runner when he is unable to find legal work, and while one of Francie's brothers dreams of becoming a chemist, the other is already in a gang. Francie is a dreamer, too, but there are risks in everything from going to the movies to walking down the block, and her pragmatism eventually outweighs her hope; "We was all poor and black and apt to stay that way, and that was that."
First published in 1970, Daddy Was a Number Runner is one of the seminal novels of the black experience in America. The New York Times Book Review proclaimed it "a most important novel."
Additional Information
| Series | Contemporary classics by women series. |
| Subjects |
African American teenage girls
-- Fiction.
Teenage girls -- Fiction. Harlem (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction. Bildungsromans. |
| Publisher | New York :Feminist Press at the City University of New York,2002 |
| Contributors |
Baldwin, James,
1924-1987, contributor. McKay, Nellie Y., contributor. |
| Language |
English |
| Description |
234 pages ; 22 cm. |
| ISBN | 1558614427 9781558614420 |
| Other | Classic View |