Saturday night...any Saturday…

the main stem sizzles and crackles with the flicker of neon lights, the pop of stale fish grease…and the horny sounds of people in love with the night.  The stem swirls in a straight line down 47th Street, heading for Buttermilk Bottom, the Fillmore District, Crenshaw, or the dusty, crusty surface of Gwinnett Street in deepest Georgia…or any other place in the New World where the Brother has had to take his chances.  

 

 ODIE HAWKINS, a native of the ghettos of  Chicago, introduces unforgettable people, not just dope fiends, pimps, hustlers and other victims of exploitation, but plain working people, indomitable survivors of injustice and the young militants who are daily reshaping the Black Experience.  

Ghetto Sketches, with its sights, sounds and smells of the “main stem”…the rat and roach infested tenements, the jazz-filled freedom of Saturday night, the soulful peace of Sunday morning, is more than a panorama of street life.  It is a powerful indictment of the existence of the inner city, that black colony sealed off from the white population of every large city, “a reservation, a Bantustan that is politely not called that…ghetto is more acceptable.” 

For Odie's book signing, and related tour information please visit our Author Tours page!

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