Blueschild Baby - A Novel

A searing chronicle of the life of a young ex-convict and heroin addict in 1960's Harlem, an unsparing portrait of a man who couldn't free himself from the horrors of addiction Blueschild Baby takes place during the summer of 1967--the summer of race riots all across the nation; the Summer of Love in the Haight Ashbury; the summer of Marines dying near Con Thien, across the world in Vietnam--but the novel illuminates the contours of a more private hell: the angry desperation of a heroin addict who returns to his home in Harlem after being in prison. First published in 1970, this frankly autobiographical novel was a revelation, a stunning depiction of a marginal figure, marked literally and figuratively by his drug addiction and navigating a predatory underground of junkies and hustlers--and named George Cain, like his author. Now with a new preface by acclaimed writer Leslie Jamison, this is an unvarnished conjuring of the tyranny of dependence: its desperation, its degradation, its rage and rebellion; the fragile, unsettled, occasional shards of hope it permits; the strange joys of being alive and young and lost and hooked and full of feverish determination anyway.

Product details

• Authors: George Cain
• Assisted by: Leslie Jamison (Introduction)
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.03.2019
• EAN: 9780062913166
• ISBN: 978-0-06-291316-6
• No. of pages: 224
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 203 mm x 13 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION: Literary, FICTION: Women, FICTION: Romance / Contemporary, FICTION: African American & Black / Women, FICTION: African American & Black / Mystery & Detective, FICTION: Romance / Collections & Anthologies, FICTION: Short Stories (single author), LITERARY COLLECTIONS: Women Authors, FICTION: African American & Black / Historical, FICTION: Romance / African American & Black, FICTION: Anthologies (multiple authors), FICTION: Psychological, FICTION: African American & Black / Urban & Street Lit, LITERARY COLLECTIONS: American / African American & Black