Before you can be a champion, — you have to be a contender.
Alfred Brooks is scared. He's a highschool dropout and his grocery store job is leading nowhere. His best friend is sinking further and further into drug addiction. Some street kids are after him for something he didn't even do. So Alfred begins going to Donatell... more »i's Gym, a boxing club in Harlem that has trained champions. There he learns it's the effort, not the win, that makes the man -- that last desperate struggle to get back on your feet when you thought you were down for the count.« less
A gut-wrenching story of life in the black ghetto written in the late 1960's. It was read during high school and has a sticker on the front that says MATURE. Content contains graphic violence and racism and the language to go along with it.
Alfred Brooks was part of the murky dropout world of junkies and petty theives. He lived in Harlem, where staying away from Whitey was the first rule of any street gang. Any member who broke this code could expect the worst the gang could give. Alfred Brooks wanted to make it straight-but he had a conflict. He wanted to stay alive as well.