Black Pulp Fiction: First Edition of Donald Goines’s Prison Novel Black Man’s Justice, White Man’s Grief, 1973

Donald Goines African American Comics Pulps

First Edition

Goines, Donald. Black Man’s Justice, White Man’s Grief, 1973, uses prison fiction to depict racism, violence, and unequal treatment within the American criminal justice system. Goines published the novel during his extraordinarily productive association with Holloway House, whose inexpensive paperbacks brought his accounts of urban poverty, crime, addiction, incarceration, and racial inequality to a large popular readership. Here, the prison itself supplies the novel’s central setting, allowing Goines to address the treatment of Black prisoners and the racial hierarchy he identified within American institutions of punishment.

Goines, Donald. Black Man’s Justice, White Man’s Grief. Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1973. First edition. 239 pages. Softcover. 4.25 x 7 inches. The orange illustrated wrapper depicts a Black prisoner leaning against the bars of a cell with his head lowered, immediately identifying incarceration as the book’s central subject. The novel follows Goines’s characteristic use of pulp crime conventions to address conditions affecting Black Americans, with imprisonment, racial prejudice, violence, and the exercise of institutional authority shaping its narrative. The mass-market format and cover presentation place the book within Holloway House’s extensive publishing program of Black-oriented popular fiction during the 1970s.

Goines became one of Holloway House’s bestselling authors and a prominent figure in the Black pulp fiction that circulated outside much of the contemporary literary establishment. His novels combined the conventions of crime fiction with subjects drawn from urban Black life, and their later readership extended into hip-hop and other forms of African American popular culture. Black Man’s Justice, White Man’s Grief is particularly tied to the history of Black prison writing through its sustained treatment of incarceration and racial discrimination rather than merely using prison as a background for criminal adventure. Faint black ink stain to the front cover, not affecting the illustration or text; extremely small chip at the top of the front cover. Textblock tight and clean. Overall very good condition.

Item #18249

Price: $225.00