The Scene is an urban half-world of drug pushers and users, of pimps and prostitutes and narcotics detectives, laid bare in this explosive novel. From the Panic, the time of no dope, to The Man, who controls its ebb and flow on the streets, The Scene is a gripping work of heightened, hellish realism … [Read more...]
THE FARM by Clarence Cooper Jr.
“So much of what we know of ourselves is a lousy God Damn lie.” Maintains the narrator of The Farm (1968). The audacious and supercharged novel by a writer of both prodigal gifts and tendencies toward self-destruction. The Farm is a Dante-esque tour of the levels of hell to be found in a federal … [Read more...]
CORNER BOY by Herbert Simmons
Corner Boy is a powerful work of social realism that won the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship in 1957. Jake Adams, at 18 years of age, strides the mean streets of his world like a conqueror. He has custom-made suits in his closet, drives a Buick Dynaflow, and has all the women he … [Read more...]
MIDNIGHT by Odie Hawkins
Midnight is one of Odie Hawkins’ finest and most sensitive works, a view inside the soul of a black man of the LA streets, a former gang leader, influenced by a man he meets in prison to search for his true identity outside the narrow confines of the ghetto – to look back to Africa to find who … [Read more...]
LOST ANGELES by Odie Hawkins
In the post-Watts Rebellion 1970s, Chester L. Simmons takes up the study of Korean martial arts – hapkido and tae kwan do – and finds it easier to understand than the Korean-American shopkeepers catering to African Americans in South Central “El-A.” As he attempts to understand the racial … [Read more...]
LETTERS FROM A LITTLE GIRL ADDICT by Rae Shawn Stewart
Letters from a Little Girl Addict is Rae’s own story of a childhood without love or guidance, and a junkie father who led her to drugs, the streets, and jail at the age of twelve. She tells her story in the form of letters to a father she looked up to and admired in spite of all he did to hurt … [Read more...]
DONALD WRITES NO MORE by Eddie Stone
Addict, Thief, Pimp, Pusher, Player…and Writer! Donald Goines was all of these things. He started as a kid, the product of a middle-class family. After high school, he joined the Navy, and discovered the heroin that would rule the remainder of his life. On the streets, he turned to writing when he … [Read more...]
INNER CITY HOODLUM by Donald Goines
Johnny Washington, a black teenager in Los Angeles, knows the freight yards like the back of his hand. He and his pals, Josh and Buddy, hit them often, stealing for a fence. They have to. They’re the sole support of their families. But when Josh is killed by a security guard (who gets his brains … [Read more...]
Who was the original Street Fiction author?
I am looking back at the origins of Street Fiction and want to know your thoughts. Who do you think wrote the first urban fiction / street lit book and what was the title of the it? Please click on Comments and share with us who you think wrote the first Street Fiction book! … [Read more...]
