Ghetto Sketches

The author, a native of the ghettos of Chicago, introduces unforgettable people who are daily reshaping the Black Experience. It is a powerful indictment of the existence of the inner city, that black colony sealed off from the white population of every large city.

ODIE HAWKINS, a native of the ghettos of Chicago, introduces unforgettable people, not just dope fiends, pimps, hustlers and other victims of exploitation, but plain working people, indomitable survivors of injustice and the young militants who are daily reshaping the Black Experience. Ghetto Sketches, with its sights, sounds and smells of the "main stem."the rat and roach infested tenements, the jazz-filled freedom of Saturday night, the soulful peace of Sunday morning, is more than a panorama of street life. It is a powerful indictment of the existence of the inner city, that black colony sealed off from the white population of every large city, "a reservation, a Bantustan that is politely not called that.ghetto is more acceptable."