Daddy Was a Number Runner

Daddy Was a Number Runner is the first novel by American writer Louise Meriwether. It was published by Prentice Hall, with a foreword by James Baldwin, in 1970, and is now considered a modern classic.[1] It depicts a poor black family in Harlem during the Great Depression in the first half of the 20th century, as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old African-American girl who has one brother who wants to be a chemist and another who is a gang member.[2][3]

Daddy Was a Number Runner
First edition
AuthorLouise Meriwether
LanguageEnglish
Published1970
PublisherPrentice Hall
Publication placeUnited States
Followed byThe Freedom Ship of Robert Smalls 

Reception

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Paule Marshall said of the book:

[Its] greatest achievement lies in the sense of black life that it conveys: vitality and force behind the despair. It celebrates the positive values behind the black experience: the tenderness and love that often lie underneath the abrasive surfaces of relationships … the humor that has long been an important part of the black survival kit, and the heroism of ordinary folk … a most important novel.[4]

It was an Essence Book Club Choice in December 2002.

References

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  1. ^ Daddy Was a Number Runner at Goodreads.
  2. ^ Rita B. Dandridge, "From Economic Insecurity to Disintegration: A Study of Character in Louise Meriwether's Daddy was a Number Runner", Negro American Literature Forum, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Autumn 1975), pp. 82–85.
  3. ^ Erica Bauermeister, Jesse Larsen and Holly Smith (eds), 500 Great Books by Women, Penguin Books, 1994, pp. 123–24.
  4. ^ Louise Meriwether page, African American Literature Book Club.

Further reading

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  • Demirtürk, E. Lâle, "Writing the Urban Discourse into the Black Ghetto Imaginary: Louise Meriwether's 'Daddy Was a Number Runner'", Southern Literary Journal, Autumn 2006, Vol. 39 Issue 1, p. 71.