Daddy was a number runner
Type
Classification
1
Contributor
2
Creator
1
Genre
1
Subject
4
Content
1
Author
1
Label
Daddy was a number runner
Language
eng
resource.accompanyingMatter
technical information on music
Form of composition
not applicable
Format of music
not applicable
Literary text for sound recordings
fiction
Main title
Daddy was a number runner
Medium
electronic resource
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."
Target audience
adult
Transposition and arrangement
not applicable
Incoming Resources
- Has instance1