Synopses & Reviews
This modern classic is “a tough, tender, bitter novel of a black girl struggling towards womanhood” in 1930s Harlem — with a foreword by James Baldwin (
Publishers Weekly).
Depression-era Harlem is home for twelve-year-old Francie Coffin and her family, and it’s both a place of refuge and the source of untold dangers for her and her poor, working class family. The beloved “daddy” of the title indeed becomes a number runner when he is unable to find legal work, and while one of Francie’s brothers dreams of becoming a chemist, the other is already in a gang. Francie is a dreamer, too, but there are risks in everything from going to the movies to walking down the block, and her pragmatism eventually outweighs her hope; “We was all poor and black and apt to stay that way, and that was that.”
First published in 1970, Daddy Was a Number Runner is one of the seminal novels of the black experience in America. The New York Times Book Review proclaimed it “a most important novel.”
Review
"A tough, tender, bitter novel of a black girl struggling towards womanhood and survival.” Publishers Weekly
Review
"Daddy Was a Number Runner is not sugar-coated or show. It is truth lived in the vernacular — a Black girl's humor and empathy as she comes to understand Harlem's dreams and tragedies...from inside out." Mary Libertin, Belles Lettres
Review
"The novel’s greatest achievement lies in the strong sense of black life that it conveys: the vitality and force behind the despair….A most important novel." Paule Marshall, The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Louise Meriwether is an American novelist, essayist, journalist, and activist. In 1970, she published her first and critically acclaimed book, Daddy Was a Number Runner (with an introduction by James Baldwin), using autobiographical elements about growing up in Harlem during the Depression and in the era after the Harlem Renaissance. She has since written short stories that have appeared in Antioch Review and Negro Digest, as well as biographies for children about historically important African Americans, including Robert Smalls, Daniel Hale Williams, and Rosa Parks. Meriwether has also taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Houston.