[Bookstoprisoners] Donald Goines read-alike list

[Anne Phillips]

Donald Goines began his writing career behind bars at Jackson
Penitentiary. Inspired by the gritty urban writings of pimp-novelist
Robert 'Iceberg Slim' Beck, Goines turned from his unsuccessful attempts
at the Western genre and wrote 'Whoreson,' a semi-autobiographical account
of the son of a prostitute who grows up to become a pimp, and 'Dopefiend,'
a raw, sordid chronicle of two black middle-class girls' descent into the
nightmarish world of addiction. Released in 1970, Goines lived out his
remaining years in a fever of writing and heroin. He was shot to death in
1974, while sitting at his typewriter putting the finishing touches on
'Kenyatta's Last Hit.' Goines' fast-paced thrillers with their
unsentimental depiction of America's mean streets are more popular today
that ever. Below is a varied list of authors that may interest Goines
fans.

IF YOU LIKE DONALD GOINES, TRY THESE AUTHORS.

Slim (Beck),  Iceberg
Trick Baby
Johnny O'Brian, a light-skinned blue-eyed ghetto pariah aka 'White Folks'
is taken under the wing of a street hustler so black they call him 'Blue,'
and learns how to play the short con game.

Brown,  Claude
Manchild in the Promised Land
This harrowing, anguished, and inspiring story about a young man maturing
into and out of a life of crime may well be the definitive account of life
on the streets.

Cooper,  Clarence L.
The Scene
Pimps, whores, hustlers, addicts, narcs, they're all a part of 'the
scene,' a grim but inevitable interdependency of hookers and hooked,
pushers and pushed.

Harris,  Eddy
Still Life in Harlem
When he was ten, his family left Harlem for the suburbs. Now Harris
returns to dwell for two years on limited funds, and find out if there is
still life in Harlem.

Himes,  Chester
The End of the Primitive
Himes: "I put a sexually frustrated American woman and a racially
frustrated black American male together for a weekend ... and allowed them
to soak in American bourbon. I got the result I was looking for..."

Holmes,  Shannon
B More Careful
The street smart leader of a girl gang, Netta has always had to do for
herself, but when she tries to play one of Baltimore's toughest players,
she may wind up paying the ultimate price.

Jones,  Solomon
Pipe Dream
City Councilman Johnny Podres is gunned down in a Philadelphia crack
house, and the dragnet tightens around four luckless pipeheads who
struggle to evade their hunters and come to terms with their addictions.

K'wan,
Gangsta: An Urban Tragedy
Crip assassin Lou-loc heads for the East Coast to become a writer and to
find out if there is any way out of The Life except death.

Mosley,  Walter
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
After 27 years in prison for murder, Socrates Fortlow grinds out a
precarious life in Watts, battling his demons and shaping a life of
dignity with his rock-breaking hands. The sequel is 'Walking the Dog.'

Mowry,  Jess
Way Past Cool
" 'Gordon! GUN!' screamed Curtis, diving off his skateboard onto
trash-covered concrete." So begins this harrowing depiction of the life
and death of gangstas on the bleak streets of Oakland.

Pelecanos,  George
King Suckerman
As Washington DC readies for a big Bicentennial blowout, Superfly wanna-be
Eddie Spags and his psychotic movie-buff sidekick hit the streets to
reclaim their stolen $20,000 and kick some jive-turkey ass.

Phillips,  Gary
The Jook
Fast living and bad investments have all but sidelined All-Pro receiver
Zelmont Raines when he heeds the siren call of the insatiable vixen Wilma
Wells. Phillips's 'The Perpetrators' is a fun, nasty rampage.

Ridley,  John
Everybody Smokes in Hell
In this raunchy noir, harried convenience store clerk Paris Scott finds
himself in possession of a load of stolen heroin, and a fleet of sleazy
bad-guys chasing him through the streets of L.A.

Sapphire,
Push
Here is the unforgettable story of Precious Jones, a sixteen-year-old
mother finding her voice and struggling to keep her spirit alive against
the very worst that Harlem can throw at her.

Souljah,  Sister
The Coldest Winter Ever
The saga of a prominent black crime family, or I was a drug-lord's
daughter: Winter Santiaga finds herself faced with underworld politics on
the mean streets when her father gets violent and gets life times 2.

Stringer,  Vickie
Let That Be The Reason
Pamela Xavier, aka 'Carmen,' has mastered the game of pimps, players and
dealers, but now that she has her man and her fortune is made, they won't
let her cash in her chips? What's a mother to do?

Thomas,  Piri
Down These Mean Streets
Classic memoir of a dark-skinned Puerto Rican growing up in Spanish
Harlem, told in raw and rhythmic prose. Also try 'Bodega Dreams,' by
Ernesto Quinonez.

Tramble,  Nichelle D.
The Dying Ground: A Hip-Hop Noir Novel
His childhood buddy has just been killed, and Maceo Redfield finds himself
on the razor's edge between his respectable college career and the deadly
world of dealers and players in the Oakland drug wars.

Turner,  Nikki
A Hustler's Wife
Yarni wanted to make a life with drug kingpin Des, but now he's sentenced
to life, and she's got a business to run and debts to pay.

Wideman,  John Edgar
All Stories Are True
This powerful and convincing collection of stories, by turns sweet,
bitter, or sad, depicts a dark kaleidoscope of life in urban black
America. Also 'Brothers and Keepers.'

Williams,  John Alfred
The Angry Ones
Steve Hill, a young black army officer, goes to work for a publisher in
New York, and his experiences soon rip the façade of hypocrisy and
condescension from a liberal and superficially hip society.

Woods,  Paula
Inner City Blues
The City of Angels is on fire, and all that stands between tough LAPD
homicide detective Charlotte Justice and her many enemies is attitude and
a badge. First in a series.

Woods,  Teri
True to the Game
It seems that Gena has found the man of her dreams in the rich, connected
Quadir, but all that money comes at a terrible price, and the Game must be
played until all the winners lose.

Wright,  Richard
Native Son
"I didn't want to kill," Bigger shouted. "But what I killed for, I am! I
didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard
enough to kill for 'em. It's the truth..."




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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Guidelines for special requests-please read (Susan Porter Bruce)
>    2. IDF drop box (Meg)
>    3. volunteerism fair at Parkland College  (Niloofar Shambayati)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 17:53:55 -0500
> From: Susan Porter Bruce <susanpbruce at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Bookstoprisoners] Guidelines for special requests-please
> 	read
> To: BTP <BooksToPrisoners at lists.chambana.net>
> Message-ID: <E0730007-455A-4089-8EA4-10923ABB79E2 at yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> BtP volunteers,
>
> Apologies for yet another email about procedures, but I spent the
> afternoon trying to clean up the Requests list and had some problems.
>
> 1. Does anyone remember posting Biographies of Kissinger and Joe
> Kennedy, Corvette, Chinese Dictionary, Sharks? They were all listed
> as n/a, no inmate number, so I removed them. If you can remember a
> name, we'll put them up again.
>
> 2. Does anyone remember sending out Mutts, Please Understand Me,
> Canada Crosswords, Zorba the Greek, or posting them on the special
> requests list? When I looked at the letter, I thought these must have
> been an order sent, not a special request. I fear sometimes people
> think they're supposed to list the books they sent on the Requests tab.
>
> 3. We had a bunch of books on cars, movies and photography that we
> thought would meet special requests, but when I checked the history I
> saw that the inmate had already received books on these topics. It
> may not have been the exact title, but it was very close. So please,
> if you've sent something good and close enough, don't list on the
> Requests.
>
> 4. Did anyone list Abnormal Psychology a few days ago? I couldn't
> open up the order or find a folder. We have two textbooks, different
> authors. It's hard to meet inmates' needs for textbooks, but we could
> sometimes get lucky.
>
> How do we fill special requests?
>
> You keep an eye out, and if you remember somebody once asked for a
> book on drawing and you see we now have one, go to our online list,
> find the inmate's number and send it or put it in the Requests box to
> the left of the computers.
>
> All of us try to look periodically at the list and scan the shelves.
>
> Sometimes we post titles on the Freecycle website. Sometimes we look
> for these at garage sales, and some of us have even been known to buy
> them from used book stores.
>
> What will we never/rarely  find?
>
> -Freemasonry, etc, the books listed on our letter.
>
> -Very specific titles unless they're commonly known, law books.
>
> -There's a genre of Urban Lit that we might buy sometime, but we
> rarely get: Goines (not Gaines, we have Gaines), Iceberg Slim, etc.
> We need to come up with a good list of read-alikes. Elmore Leonard, etc.
>
> If you're uncertain whether we will ever come across a book, take a
> quick look at Amazon. If it's ranked in the really high numbers, we
> probably won't find it.
>
> Finally, we really can't keep requests more than about 6 months.
> Things change, people get paroled, we should tell them to write back
> to us.
>
> Here are "good" requests:  Puerto Rican History, Philosophies and
> Opinions of Marcus Garvey, "Title/author/paperback only," Spanish
> dictionary, ancient temples.
>
> Here are impossible requests; Thiner, Scachen, Tablets of Ishtar and
> Tammuz. This last leads on Amazon to a book on Mythology, which we
> might get.
>
> Understand that inmates sometimes must have access to Books in Print,
> but we don't. How do they get these titles?
>
> Susan
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 05:25:08 -0500
> From: "Meg" <bookish at tswireless.net>
> Subject: [Bookstoprisoners] IDF drop box
> To: bookstoprisoners at lists.chambana.net
> Message-ID: <450F7F34.31619.1733B2 at localhost>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
> Dear BTPers,
> I'm having a hard time getting in to C-U during the hours IDF is
> open on the weekends.  Is anyone willing to be the IDF pick up
> person?
> Thanks,
> Meg
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 10:09:37 -0500
> From: "Niloofar Shambayati" <Nilu at insightbb.com>
> Subject: [Bookstoprisoners] volunteerism fair at Parkland College
> To: <bookstoprisoners at ucimc.org>
> Message-ID: <000601c6dbfd$9f932fb0$6501a8c0 at CUTIES>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="windows-1256";
> 	reply-type=response
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> Parkland will have a "volunteerism fair" on September 27, from 10:30 to
> 1:30
> & I've signed up to set up a table for BTP project.  The problem is that
> I'm
> in class from 10:00 to 3: 00, with a break between 11:00 & 11:45.  I can
> make flyers to place on the table & set up the table & spend 45 minutes at
> the table.  Is there anyone who could pitch in & represent us at the
> table?
> It might be worth it if we could get even a couple of volunteers out of
> this
> event. Please let me know.
>
> Peace,
> Niloofar
>  ----- Original Message -----
> From: "jamie storm" <gary_jamie at hotmail.com>
> To: <sandra.ahten at gmail.com>; <bookstoprisoners at ucimc.org>
> Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2006 6:15 PM
> Subject: RE: [Bookstoprisoners] volunteer announcment and flier and
> updates
>
>
>> I'm willing to be the volunteer point-person.
>>
>> I understand that to mean that flier-takers will email me with whatever
>> route(s) she/he is willing to take and by when  and that I'll keep a
>> master list of who's volunteered to do what and when.
>>
>> Thanks for the structure, Sandra.
>>
>> Jamie
>>
>>
>>>From: "Sandra Ahten" <sandra.ahten at gmail.com>
>>>To: bookstoprisoners at ucimc.org
>>>Subject: [Bookstoprisoners] volunteer announcment and flier and updates
>>>Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 16:44:21 -0500
>>>
>>>Attached is
>>>1) an announcment for you to forward to email groups that you belong to
>>>2) a flier to print out (pdf) and hang in various locations.
>>>3) a fliering list -- for you to get ideas about where to hang them.
>>>
>>>If anyone wants to volunteer to be the point-person to coordinate
>>> getting
>>>fliers out... please email the group and tell us that you will do that.
>>>Then
>>>people can email the point-person directly about which routes they are
>>>taking. If we do not get a volunteer for this.. PLEASE don't email the
>>>list
>>>with the details of which routes you are taking..it will be too much
>>>email.
>>>
>>>
>>>Thanks to our newest volunteers: Gary Storm -- who is picking up the
>>> books
>>>from Strawberry Fields for us now! Ann Sibley who is coming in weekly to
>>>do
>>>some packaging.
>>>
>>>We have a new work time -- Tuesday 7-9pm. This is being covered by Jane
>>>and
>>>Niloofar.
>>>
>>>Jamie and Jane are getting and processing mail while I'm gone.
>>>
>>>If the copier breaks down: 1. reboot  2. shut off various electrical
>>>things
>>>in the room and try again. 3. call bundy business systems (but someone
>>>will
>>>have to meet them there (chris) to let them in to work on it.)
>>>
>>>We should have several new internet access computers in the ante room in
>>>the
>>>next week or so.
>>>
>>>All boxes are now stored above the book shelves in our workroom.
>>>
>>>Until Chris gets the men's bathroom anteroom (woodshop) cleared up...
>>>incoming books are coming straight into the BtP workroom.
>>>
>>>Someone needs to bring books down from the Post Office lobby
>>> occasionally.
>>>
>>>I'm off to Austin in the morning. I expect I'll be on email for a short
>>>time
>>>daily, until Thursday. Then I'll be at the Ausin City Limits Music
>>>Fesitval
>>>for 3 days. Returning on Sept 21st,ish.
>>>
>>>Jay and Suzanne are now happy married couple. Big congrats!
>>>
>>>Peace to everyone.
>>>
>>>Sandra
>>
>>
>>><< 0609volunteerPSA.doc >>
>>
>>
>>><< 0609volunteerflier.pdf >>
>>
>>
>>><< flierlistwithgreatcampuslisting.doc >>
>>
>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>BooksToPrisoners mailing list
>>>BooksToPrisoners at lists.chambana.net
>>>http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/bookstoprisoners
>>
>>
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> End of BooksToPrisoners Digest, Vol 16, Issue 14
> ************************************************
>