system." This is the story of Chester Hines, who thought he was the baddest man to come down the street. Behind prison walls he was nothing more than fresh meat.“All those [other black] writers, no matter how well they dealt with black experience, appealed largely to an educated, middle-class, largely white readership. They brought news of one place to the residents of another. Goines’ novels, on the other hand , are written from ground zero. They are almost unbearable. It is not the educated voice of a writer who has, so to speak, risen above his background, it is the voice of the ghetto itself.” --Michael Covino The Village Voice

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