1966. I just finished this fabulous book. A white kid with a brief recollection of being nursed by a black nanny when he was five, becomes convinced that black people's lives are more real, have more depth, life, immediacy to them, than his white suburban life could ever have.

He moves from Chicago to East St. Louis and gets a job heaving sacks of mail onto trains. Eventually he meets a black man at work who takes him to a hotel where whores and heroin are what it's all about. The white kid falls in love with a black social worker, smokes a lot of pot and sleeps with some hookers, but the girl won't marry him and he ends up going back to Chicago eventually. The ghetto gets too ugly for him.

This book was written with great honesty and sensitivity I thought. The kid really wants to understand the racisl divide, but even when he understands it, he can't bridge it and he can't escape his own privileged position in society.

It was sad, moving, gripping, idealistic, and perhaps a bit too sincere. I'd say Shorris was young at the time and if he had to do it over now, he could probably leave out some of the sentimentality.

Incidentally ofay, black slang for white people like honky, is here said to be foe in pig latin. ( )