Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown

Claude Brown

Claude Brown, author of Manchild in the Promised Land, is an incredible person.....

Any person who decides to change his life and stick to it, is an incredible person!

Manchild in the Promised Land is fictional but based on Claude’s life. According to Claude, starting at a very young age living in Harlem, NY, he almost never went to school, he was in and out of juvenile facilities, and dabbled with drugs and prostitutes. However, after encounters with a few people who told him that they believed in him, in his teens he decided to leave home, go back to school, stop doing drugs, and he learned to play the piano. REMARKABLE!!!

Now, I didn’t enjoy this book, but I did appreciate it. The entire book, over 300 pages, was all about life on the streets in Harlem and the people that Sonny, the main character, met along the way. However, I read about Claude before I started this book, and I was so sure that he would tell how he ended up going and graduating from Howard University and later attending Law school at Stanford and Rutgers. However, that did not happen.

Most of the people who highly recommended this book to me were men who read this book when they were in their early teens, and I do understand how this book would be appealing to teen boys; Sonny was a daring brother.

So, to this end, this is one of those books that sells lots and lots each year, and therefore, I think that it is one to read if you like to be in the know about African American literature. However, I think the audience that would enjoy this book the most would be early teen boys.

Not my kind of book, but I am happy that I read it!