Manchild in the Promised Land

Claude Brown (1937-2002) was an American author best known for his landmark autobiographical work Manchild in the Promised Land (1965), which chronicled his coming-of-age amid poverty, crime, and violence in Harlem during the 1940s and 1950s, selling over 4 million copies and translated into 14 languages. His follow-up, Children of Ham (1976), explored black teenagers' struggles with heroin addiction, though it achieved less commercial success.