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Title details for Blueschild Baby by George Cain - Available

Blueschild Baby

by George Cain
Leslie Jamison
ebook
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"The most important work of fiction by an Afro-American since Native Son." —Addison Gayle, Jr., The New York Times Book Review
A searing chronicle of the life of a young ex-convict and heroin addict in 1960's Harlem, an unsparing portrait of a man who couldn't free himself from the horrors of addiction
Blueschild Baby takes place during the summer of 1967—the summer of race riots all across the nation; the Summer of Love in the Haight Ashbury; the summer of Marines dying near Con Thien, across the world in Vietnam—but the novel illuminates the contours of a more private hell: the angry desperation of a heroin addict who returns to his home in Harlem after being in prison.
First published in 1970, this frankly autobiographical novel was a revelation, a stunning depiction of a marginal figure, marked literally and figuratively by his drug addiction and navigating a predatory underground of junkies and hustlers—and named George Cain, like his author.
Now with a new preface by acclaimed writer Leslie Jamison, this is an unvarnished conjuring of the tyranny of dependence: its desperation, its degradation, its rage and rebellion; the fragile, unsettled, occasional shards of hope it permits; the strange joys of being alive and young and lost and hooked and full of feverish determination anyway.
"[A] powerful literary account of addiction." —The New Yorker
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Publisher: HarperCollins

Kindle Book

  • Release date: December 15, 2023

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9780062913180
  • Release date: December 15, 2023

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9780062913180
  • File size: 991 KB
  • Release date: December 15, 2023
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Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

Fiction African American Fiction Literature

Languages

English

"The most important work of fiction by an Afro-American since Native Son." —Addison Gayle, Jr., The New York Times Book Review
A searing chronicle of the life of a young ex-convict and heroin addict in 1960's Harlem, an unsparing portrait of a man who couldn't free himself from the horrors of addiction
Blueschild Baby takes place during the summer of 1967—the summer of race riots all across the nation; the Summer of Love in the Haight Ashbury; the summer of Marines dying near Con Thien, across the world in Vietnam—but the novel illuminates the contours of a more private hell: the angry desperation of a heroin addict who returns to his home in Harlem after being in prison.
First published in 1970, this frankly autobiographical novel was a revelation, a stunning depiction of a marginal figure, marked literally and figuratively by his drug addiction and navigating a predatory underground of junkies and hustlers—and named George Cain, like his author.
Now with a new preface by acclaimed writer Leslie Jamison, this is an unvarnished conjuring of the tyranny of dependence: its desperation, its degradation, its rage and rebellion; the fragile, unsettled, occasional shards of hope it permits; the strange joys of being alive and young and lost and hooked and full of feverish determination anyway.
"[A] powerful literary account of addiction." —The New Yorker
Expand title description text
Fiction African American Fiction Literature