Donald Goines

Now reissued with a fresh new look, the first novel written by Donald Goines, one of the most revolutionary writers of the 20th century. Written while he was in prison and rumored to be his most autobiographical, this uncensored, gritty book has gone on to inspire street lit and hip hop culture as we know it today.

THE MASTERPIECE ABOUT A PIMP’S STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE IN DETROIT’S WORLD OF VIOLENCE AND BRUTAL SEX

“After my ninth birthday I began to really understand the meaning of my name. I began to understand just what my mother was doing for a living. There was nothing I could do about it, but even had I been able to, I wouldn’t have changed it.”

Whoreson Jones is the son of a beautiful black prostitute and an unknown white john. As a child, he’s looked after by his neighborhood’s imposing matriarch, Big Mama, while his mother works. At age twelve, his street education begins when a man named Fast Black schools him in trickology. By thirteen, Whoreson’s a cardsharp. By sixteen, his childhood abruptly ends, and he is a full-fledged pimp, cold-blooded and ruthless, battling to understand and live up to his mother’s words: “First be a man, then be a pimp.”