Daddy Was a Number Runner (Expanded Edition) - 2nd Edition by Louise Meriwether (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"A most important novel."--The New York Times Book Review

A new edition of Louise Meriwether's classic novel about young Francie Coffin's coming-of-age in the vivid world of Harlem in the 1930s, including new pieces that celebrate the author's life, work, and activism.

Francie Coffin is the daughter of a number runner: someone who collects betting slips for the illegal street lottery that carries the hopes of the people of Harlem in the 1930s. In Louise Meriwether's classic debut, an immediate sensation on its first publication in 1970, we see Harlem through Francie's eyes: in fraught family conversations, in friendships and movies and suppers at Father Divine's, in exiled sons and daughters, in dream books, in dignity under pressure.

This edition contains the full text of the original novel, as well as its original foreword by James Baldwin and afterword by Nellie McKay, now expanded to include reactions to the novel by newer generations of Black women writers like Bridgett M. Davis and Deesha Philyaw, as well as two newly available interviews on Meriwether's legacy of writing, community, and activism.

Review Quotes

Praise for Daddy Was a Number Runner

"The novel's greatest achievement lies in the strong sense of black life that it conveys: the vitality and force behind the despair. It celebrates the positive values of the black experience: the tenderness and love that often underlie the abrasive surface of relationships . . . the humor that has long been an important part of the black survival kit, and the heroism of ordinary folk. . . . A most important novel." --Paule Marshall, New York Times Book Review

"Daddy Was a Number Runner is not sugar-coated or show. It is truth lived in the vernacular--a Black girl's humor and empathy as she comes to understand Harlem's dreams and tragedies . . . from inside out. Louise Meriwether's voice is the Black feminist novelist's equivalent of the Blues. If you like modern classics by Naylor, Morrison, and Marshall, you will love this. . . . You will not be able to put it down or forget Francie, one of my all-time favorite characters." --Mary Libertin, Belles Lettres

"A tough, tender, bitter novel of a black girl struggling towards womanhood and survival." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Louise Meriwether (1923-2023) was an American novelist, essayist, journalist, and activist as well as a writer of biographies of historically important African Americans for children. She is best known for her first novel, Daddy Was a Number Runner (1970), which draws on autobiographical elements about growing up in Harlem during the Depression and in the era after the Harlem Renaissance.