Daddy Was a Number Runner (55th Anniversary Edition)

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 novel, 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 writers including Bridgett M. Davis, Deesha Philyaw, and Tayari Jones and reflections on Louise Meriwether’s life, activism, and writing from her contemporaries and comrades.