African American Pulp Fiction, James Howard Readus Black Renegades, 1976

James-Howard Readus Blaxploitation

First Edition

Readus, James-Howard. Black Renegades, 1976, belongs to the Black pulp fiction that Holloway House marketed increasingly to African American readers during the 1970s. The novel follows brothers known as the Black Renegades as they build a drug empire, placing its protagonists within the crime, violence, and urban underworld narratives characteristic of the publisher’s fiction during the decade. Published when Holloway House had become a major outlet for Black-authored popular fiction, the novel documents a commercial literary culture that developed alongside 1970s blaxploitation cinema while reaching its audience through inexpensive mass-market paperbacks.

Readus, James-Howard. Black Renegades. Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1976. First edition. 221 pages. Illustrated wrappers. 4.25 x 7 inches. No dust jacket, as issued. The cover juxtaposes four figures, including two holding guns and another wearing a broad-brimmed hat associated with the visual vocabulary of the 1970s pimp figure. Its design announces the novel’s crime narrative through imagery already familiar from contemporary blaxploitation films and Black-oriented pulp publishing.

By the early 1970s, Holloway House had shifted from marketing racialized “sleaze” primarily to white readers toward publishing crime and action fiction by Black writers for a growing Black readership. Literary scholar Kinohi Nishikawa identifies this publishing and reading culture as the “black literary underground,” tracing how authors including Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines acquired audiences extending well beyond the expectations of the white-owned press that published them. Later artists including Ice-T and Dave Chappelle cited this literary culture as part of a recognizable Black popular tradition. Light shelf wear; text block tight and clean. Overall good condition. Black Renegades preserves both Readus’s urban crime narrative and Holloway House’s distinctive packaging of Black pulp fiction during the genre’s expansion in the 1970s.

Item #18242

Price: $225.00