City Kid: A Writer's Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success($15.09Value)

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" City Kid is perhaps one of the seven greatest books ever written. It has the realness of The Autobiography of Malcolm X , the warmth of The Color Purple , and the page count of Tuesdays with Morrie . It's a must read."-Chris Rock From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series, "The Get Down, an affecting memoir of his coming of age. Nelson George was the nerd of his ghetto neighborhood; the kid who devoured Captain America comics, Ernest Hemingway novels, and album liner notes. City Kid describes how George evolved into an award-winning journalist and filmmaker, becoming a key figure in framing hip hop for the rest of us. The story begins with a fractured family life-an absent father, a struggling single mother, and a sister who falls victim to the streets-but ends in triumph all around. George overcomes both his own nerdiness, as well as the odds against him, to become a godfather of the hip hop movement-he was there at the beginning, and in City Kid he tells us what it was really like. Writing with emotion, but without false sentiment, George creates an insightful and inspirational portrait of an emerging success, as well as the triumphant rise of hip hop culture and black artists in the 80s and 90s. "Stories of [George's] boyhood moments are funny and downright arresting: his spiritual alignment with Captain America or the pluses and pitfalls of embracing the symbolism of the 1968 message movie 'Planet of the Apes'. You can see the seeds of a media critic being planted, and its fun to watch." - Los Angeles Times "In a direct and passionate writing style, George recounts what it was like to be young, black, poor-and driven... City Kid puts the reader at the pulsating fault line of the seismic shakeup of black movies and music in the 1980s and 1990s." - BookPage "Swift and authoritative." - The Onion "Charming memoir...a front-row seat to New York's shifting dynamics." - Time Out New York Nelson George, supervising producer and writer for the Netflix series "The Get Down," is an award-winning author of both fiction and nonfiction. He has written for Playboy , Billboard , Esquire , the Village Voice , Essence , and many other national magazines, as well as writing and producing television programs and feature films. Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Epigraph Introduction   HOW I CAME TO BE HIGH FIDELITY THE VILLE MY HERO A THIN LINE BETWEEN LOVE AND HATE PEER PRESSURE A THEATER ON PITKIN AVENUE SOUL SONGS HANGING WITH CAPTAIN AMERICA BK ’69 AFRODISIACS JOINING THE LITERARY GUILD BK EARLY SEVENTIES TILDEN TOPICS NYC LATE SEVENTIES THE WHITE LINES THAT BIND NYC EARLY EIGHTIES KINGS FROM QUEENS BLACK HOLLYWOOD FROM MOTOROLA TO MOTOWN FORT GREENE DREAMS TALKING HEAD VOICES INSIDE MY HEAD EAST NEW YORK SPIKE JOKES AND SMOKE LIFE SUPPORT FAMILY REUNION ALSO BY NELSON GEORGE NONFICTION Post-Soul Nation Hip Hop America Buppies, B-boys, Baps, & Bohos Blackface Elevating the Game The Death of Rhythm & Blues Where Did Our Love Go?   WITH RUSSELL SIMMONS Life and Def   FICTION The Accidental Hunter Night Work Show & Tell One Woman Short Seduced Urban Romance VIKING   Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa   Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England   First published in 2009 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.   Copyright © Nelson George, 2009 All rights reserved   PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS Insert page 7 (top): Photo Chuck Pulin Insert page 10: © Chase Roe Insert page 12 (top): © David Lee 2008 Insert page 13 (bottom): © suekwon Other insert photographs courtesy of Nelson George   LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA   George, Nelson. City kid : a writer’s memoir of ghetto life and post-soul success / by Nelson George. p. cm. eISBN : 978-1-101-02240-5 1. George, Nelson. 2. Music critics—United States—Biography. 3. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. I. Title. ML423.G317A3 2009 781.64092—dc22 [B] 2008027422     Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be rep