Low road : the life and legacy of Donald Goines

Donald Goines was a pimp, a truck driver, a heroin addict, a factory worker, and a career criminal. He was also one of world's most popular Black contemporary writers. Having published 16 novels, including Whoreson , Dopefiend , and Daddy Cool , Goines's unique brand of "street narrative" and "ghetto realism" mark him as the original street writer. Now, in the first in-depth biography of Goines's life, author Eddie B. Allen explores exactly how one man could make the transition from street hustler to bestselling author. With exclusive access to personal letters, treatments from unwritten books, photographs, and family members, Allen uncovers Goines's personal experiences with drugs, prostitutes, prison, and urban violence. Fans of Goines's novels will note a dramatic parallelism between his life and his fictional tales.

Donald Goines was a pimp, truck driver, heroin addict, factory worker, and career criminal. He was also one of the most popular Black contemporary writers having published sixteen novels, including Whoreson, Dopefiend, and Daddy Cool. Goines's unique brand of "street narrative" and "ghetto realism" mark him as the original street writer. Now, in the first in-depth biography of Goines's life, author Eddie B. Allen, Jr. explores exactly how one man made the transition from street hustler to bestselling author. With exclusive access to personal letters, treatments from unwritten books, photographs, and family members, Allen uncovers Goines's experiences with drugs, prostitutes, prison, and urban violence. Fans of Goines’s novels will note a dramatic parallelism between his life and fictional tales.

A portrait of the popular African-American novelist discusses his life as a street hustler, heroin addict, and factory worker before he transitioned into writing, citing how his earlier years were marked by violence, prostitution, and prison and revealing how his experiences were used in the creation of his successful literary works. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.