Horrors of Ghetto Life Exposed in Whoreson and Dopefiend
Donald Goines's lived the majority of his life either on the streets of the ghetto or in jail-because he was supporting himself and his heroin addiction by taking part in many illegal activities. During the last of his many prison terms, Goines finally found his way out of having to rely on crime for his way of living. He did this by writing about his life on the streets. His first two books, Whoreson and Dopefiend, were actually written during his last prison term. One critic of Goines, his biographer Eddie Stone, says the following about these books: "Whoreson, like most of Donald Goines's books, is autobiographical . . . . Donald wrote Dopefiend from personal experience, and the pages of the novel draw the reader into that world with almost hypnotic rhythm" (145, 151-52). It is because of the fact that Goines was writing from experience that he was able to make reading one of his books such a captivating and harrowing experience. These books are similar because they are both realistic portrayals of the negative aspects of ghetto life, and they are both Goines's attempts to try to keep the next generation of young black people from making the same mistakes that he did. However, these books differ because Dopefiend is a more truthful, autobiographical portrayal of what Goines's life was really like than Whoreson is.
Goines's ghetto, as portrayed in Whoreson, is essentially the same ghetto he lived in all his life, which makes his portrayal of the negative aspects of ghetto life quite realistic. Therefore, because Goines was writing from experience, this makes his portrayal of the ghetto all the more realistic. In fact, Stone, even quotes passages ...
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...iend he or she would have a story close to Goines's real life biography. Dopefiend chronicles the horror of heroin addiction, which was his motive for becoming a pimp (like Whoreson). While Whoreson chronicles his reasons for embracing street life as a teenager, before he went to Korea and became a heroin addict.
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Goines, Donald. Dopefiend. Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1971.
- - - . Whoreson. Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1972.
Secondary Sources
Goode, Greg. "From Dopefiend to Kenyatta's Last Hit: The Angry Black Crime Novels of Donald Goines," MELUS 11.3 (1984): 41-48.
- - - . "Donald Goines," DLB 33, Afro-American Fiction Writers After 1955, eds Thadious M. Davis and Trudier Harris, 1984, 96-100.
Stone, Eddie. Donald Writes No More: A Biography of Donald Goines. Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1974.
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