Daddy Was a Number Runner A Novel |
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| Author:
| Meriwether, Louise |
| Read by:
| Murray, Karen |
| ISBN: | 979-8-212-26719-9 |
| Publication Date: | Jun 2022 |
| Publisher: | Tantor Media, Incorporated
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| Imprint: | Tantor Audio |
| Book Format: | CD-Audio |
| List Price: | USD $36.99 |
Book Description:
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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...
More Description 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."