ABSTRACT
Reading the obituaries on the death of Claude Brown (who died of a pulmonary ailment on the 13th of February 2002) made me realize that such post-mortems can be cruel and careless and careless as well as comforting. One would think that what made Manchild in the Promised Land an important, even landmark work, was that it is-as one obituary put it-“the tale of a boyhood spent among killers, drug addicts and prostitutes.” The same syndicated obituary speaks of the book as “evoking Harlem’s astonishing culture of violence.” Even the death notice of American Booksellers Association recounting the passing of Brown, speaks of Manchild being a “controversial book that exposed mainstream audiences to the stark realities of drugs and violence experienced by blacks in the 1940s and 1950s.”
