Black Cracker

South School 1962: The last segregated school in New York. Their teacher moonlights on Lawrence Welk the lady principal wears boxing gloves and the student body is all-Negro . . . except for first grader Josh Friedman. Hes white but hes working on it. The acclaimed author of TELL THE TRUTH UNTIL THEY BLEED and TALES OF TIMES SQUARE returns with a one-of-a-kind autobiographical novel - a memoir you cant accuse of lies. Center stage in the unflinching and frequently hilarious funhouse tour of Friedmans Long Island boyhood is a rogues gallery that includes Bobo precocious third-grade dropout and boy prince of the ghetto; his bumbling (and alarmingly potent) neer-do-well Uncle Limpy; Mumsy the smelliest shoeshine boy in Penn Station; Mrs. OLeary the menacing Irish nanny; her son Drake an etiquette-obsessed switchblade-totin clammer overwhelmed by the tides of racial progress; and the impoverished Wilshires the bone-white nigger-hatin-est crackers in town. At once heartbreaking and hysterically funny BLACK CRACKER delivers a fearless account of adventures in the now-forgotten poor Black shantytowns of Long Island exploring the singular ugliness of racism the intrigue of janitorial whodunits the tragic limits of friendship and the inexplicable seductive powers of croco-print footwear.