Publisher's Note This 1973 underclass classic circulated in photocopies through Eastern black ghettos after going out of print in 1980. It is now reissued with a new introduction in which surviving members of the Damned suggest its relevance to the worsening problems of the poor today. "This...may be," the authors wrote, "the first time that poor and petit-bourgeois black people have described the full reality of our oppression and struggle. We have tried to speak in the names of countless others...Please let our individual names pass away and be forgotten with all the nameless..."
Industry Reviews "Explication of the growing conviction among radical blacks that the oppressor is not the white man but middle class structure & ideology & includes black as well as white representatives. Motion toward another stage of political development is amplified in individual testimonies. Cognizance of the blind alley of racialism & the simplistic outlook of black nationalism is included in deeply felt statements by the young men & women who contribute to this Third World publication." Corry