Description
Book SynopsisThe sociologist Terry Williams returns to the cocaine culture of Harlem in the 1980s and ’90s with an ethnographic account of a club he calls Le Boogie Woogie. He explores the life of a cast of characters that includes regulars and bar workers, dealers and hustlers, following social interaction around the club’s active bar.
Trade ReviewTerry Williams has already established himself as a master of gaining access to hard-to-reach, hidden, and vulnerable populations. He has done so again here, giving an in-depth look at a place with which most people will be totally unfamiliar in a vivid and compelling style. -- Richard E. Ocejo, author of
Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban EconomyWilliams, our twenty-first century griot with an unparalleled deftness for illuminating the most cavernous recesses of our humanity, weaves together exquisite prose, unburdened by self-consciousness or recriminations, pulsating with such delicious expectancy of nights lived reckless but free, tempered by a palpable compassion that renders the foreign familiar and lays bare the beautifully flawed souls buried beneath. -- Lawanna R. Kimbro, civil rights attorney
An admirable effort to illuminate a hidden world that will be most useful to fellow researchers in the social sciences. * Kirkus Reviews *
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction
1. The Setting
2. The Scene
3. The Characters
4. After-Hours Now
Conclusion: A Culture of Refusal
Acknowledgments
Appendix 1. Methodological Appendix
Appendix 2. Field Note Samples
Appendix 3. Where Are They Now?
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
