conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a story about Sonny, Harlem, Autobiographical with the genre: Politics & Social Sciences, Social Sciences?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this story could be 'Manchild in the Promised Land'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Manchild in the Promised Land
  I WANT to talk about the first Northern urban generation of Negroes. I want to talk about the experiences of a misplaced generation, of a misplaced people in an extremely complex, confused society. This is a story of their searching, their dreams, their sorrows, their small and futile rebellions, and their endless battle to establish their own place in America's greatest metropolis—and in America itself.
  The characters are sons and daughters of former Southern sharecroppers. These were the poorest people of the South, who poured into New York City during the decade following the Great Depression. These migrants were told that unlimited opportunities for prosperity existed in New York and that there was no "color problem" there. They were told that Negroes lived in houses with bathrooms, electricity, running water, and indoor toilets. To them, this was the "promised land" that Mammy had been singing about in the cotton fields for many years.
  Going to New York was good-bye to the cotton fields, good-bye to "Massa Charlie," good-bye to the chain gang, and, most of all, goodbye to those sunup-to-sundown working hours. One no longer had to wait to get to heaven to lay his burden down; burdens could be laid down in New York.
  So, they came, from all parts of the South, like all the black chillun o' God following the sound of Gabriel's horn on that long-overdue Judgment Day. The Georgians came as soon as they were able to pick train fare off the peach trees. They came from South Carolina where the cotton stalks were bare. The North Carolinians came with tobacco tar beneath their fingernails.
  They felt as the Pilgrims must have felt when they were coming to America. But these descendants of Ham must have been twice as happy as the Pilgrims, because they had been catching twice the hell. Even while planning the trip, they sang spirituals as "Jesus Take My Hand" and "I'm On My Way" and chanted, "Hallelujah, I'm on my way to the promised land!"
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I used to wish I'd been there when it happened, whatever happened. Since I hadn't been, I felt that all I could do now was try to give his family a word of comfort, say something that might help. After fumbling for words and sitting there feeling uncomfortable for what seemed like hours but really wasn't more than fifteen minutes, I got up to go.
  Just as I got up, Mrs. Crawford said in her West Indian accent, "Why, Sonny Boy, didn't you start using the damn dope too? Why did my Butch have to use that damn dope and go and kill himself?" She said, "All of the boys on Eighth Avenue, just about, is killing their damn selves with that damn dope. Sonny Boy, why didn't you?"
  I told her I didn't know. She didn't say it, but I had the feeling she was saying, "Why aren't you dead too? Why aren't you dead instead of my Butch? Or if he has to be, why aren't all you boys who came up on Eighth Avenue and did all the same things together?.. You played hookey together, you stole together, and you stayed out together." She knew these things, so I guess she felt we were all supposed to die together. I suppose that when a mother's son dies, she hates all sons, all sons who are alive.
  After I got out of there, I just couldn't go to the funeral. Butch was a good friend of mine, but it was too much. I was getting tired of funerals. I was getting tired of seeing cats I knew die from overdoses, cats who had promising futures, who had good heads on their shoulders, cats I ran the streets with when we were in short pants. I was tired of seeing their familes looking at me and saying, "I wish he could have been like you," or something like this. I was tired of being alive, not being strung out on dope at somebody's funeral who had been strung out and finally died from it. I was tired of going there and watching what duji was doing to everybody.
  People came back and told me about Butch's funeral. I looked all over town that night for Danny. I finally went around to his parents' house and found him there. His mother was happy to see me. Mrs. Rogers was always nice to me, and she always wanted me to keep hanging out with Danny. It was kind of hard, seeing as how he was a junkie, and junkies couldn't be trusted too much.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Reno said, "Every time a bitch fucks up, I'm gonna just cut her loose and get another one. Every time I get a new bitch, the other Cadillac's gon be hers. You dig it?"
  I used to feel that I belonged on the Harlem streets and that, regardless of what I did, nobody had any business to take me off the streets.
  I remember when I ran away from shelters, places that they sent me to, here in the city. I never ran away with the thought in mind of coming home. I always ran away to get back to the streets. I always thought of Harlem as home, but I never thought of Harlem as being in the house. To me, home was the streets. I suppose there were many people who felt that. If home was so miserable, the street was the place to be. I wonder if mine was really so miserable, or if it was that there was so much happening out in the street that it made home seem such a dull and dismal place.
  When I was very young—about five years old, maybe younger—I would always be sitting out on the stoop. I remember Mama telling me and Carole to sit on the stoop and not to move away from in front of the door. Even when it was time to go up and Carole would be pulling on me to come upstairs and eat, I never wanted to go, because there was so much out there in that street.
  You might see somebody get cut or killed. I could go out in the street for an afternoon, and I would see so much that, when I came in the house, I'd be talking and talking for what seemed like hours. Dad would say, "Boy, why don't you stop that lyin'? You know you didn't see all that. You know you didn't see nobody do that." But I knew I had.