Donald Goines: The Father Figure to America’s Lost Generation of Fatherless Black Men

“Machiavelli was my tutor Donald Goines, my father figure/Mama sent me to go play with the drug dealers/So henceforth we thug niggaz” - Tupac, “Tradin’ War Stories.”

My (J) death row client and many other brothers I know LOVE Donald Goines books. In many ways, Goines’ books were the first in the genre of “Gangsta Lit.” I’ve never read one, but I know they circulate widely in ‘hood circles. Anyone have any insights?

“American writer, a career criminal and addict who wrote his first two novels in prison. Goines’s books have inspired a number of lyricists from Tupac to Noreaga. They have sold over 5 million copies - according to rumors the figure has reached 10 million. His series about Kenyatta (under the name Al C. Clark) describes a black revolutionary, who campaigns against exploitation and evils of inner city life. Goines published all his works in the period of four years.

“Hey, brother, wait a minute now. I don’t want you to leave with no kind of attitude now, ’cause ain’t nobody did nothin’ to you,” Curtis stated sharply, then added, “’cause if you think you been cheated, run it down to me. I don’t run no kind of crooked game, not in my momma’s backyard, no way.” (from Cry Revenge!, 1974)

“Donald Goines was born in Detroit to a relatively comfortable family - his parents owned a local dry cleaner, and he did not have problems with the law or drugs. Goines attended Catholic elementary school and was expected to go into his family’s laundry business. Instead Goines enlisted in the US Air Force, and to get in he had to lie his age. From 1952 to 1955 he served in the army. During this period he got hooked on heroin. When he returned to Detroit from Japan, he was a heroin addict.

“The next 15 years from 1955 Goines spent pimping, robbing, stealing, bootlegging, and running numbers, or doing time. His seven prison sentences totaled 6,5 years. While in jail in the 1960s he first attempted to write Westerns without much success - he loved cowboy movies. A few years later, serving a different sentence at a different prison, he was introduced to the work of Iceberg Slim (Robert Beck). This time Goines wrote his semi-autobiographical novel Whoreson, which appeared in 1972. It was a story about the son of a prostitute who becomes a Detroit ghetto pimp. Also Beck’s first book, Pimp: The Story of My Life (1967), was autobiographical. Goines was released in 1970, after which he wrote 16 novels with Holloway House, Iceberg Slim’s publisher. Hoping to get rid of surroundings - he was back on smack - he moved with his family to the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts.”