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From one of the most revolutionary writers of the twentieth century comes the uncensored and gritty novel that inspired today's street lit and hip-hop culture.

After my ninth birthday, I began to really understand the meaning of my name. I began to understand just what my mother was doing for a living. There was nothing I could do about it, but even had I been able to, I wouldn't have changed it.

Whoreson Jones is the son of a beautiful black prostitute and an unknown white john. As a child, he's looked after by his neighborhood's imposing matriarch, Big Mama, while his mother works. At age twelve, his street education begins when a man named Fast Black schools him in trickology. By thirteen, Whoreson's a cardsharp. By sixteen, his childhood abruptly ends, and he is a full-fledged pimp, cold-blooded and ruthless, battling to understand and live up to his mother's words: First be a man, then be a pimp.

Donald Goines (1936-1974) was a career criminal and addict who took up writing during one of his seven prison sentences. Between 1969 and 1974, he published sixteen novels, which are now recognized as almost unbearably authentic portraits of the roughest aspects of the black experience.

Kevin Kenerly, an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, earned a BA degree at Olivet College. A longtime member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has acted in fifteen seasons, playing dozens of roles.