American writer, a career criminal and addict who wrote his first two novels in prison. Goines's books have inspired a number of lyricists from Tupac Shakur to Noreaga. They have sold over 5 million copies - according to rumors the figure has reached 10 million. His series about Kenyatta (under the name Al C. Clark) describes a black revolutionary, who campaigns against exploitation and evils of inner city life.

  "Donald Goines wrote fiction the way other people package meat. There is little point in picking any of his titles as outstanding, since they are all formulaic. Equally, however, they are outstanding in that they are street-real and avoid the romanticism of many of the films and books about black life in America." (Andrew Calcutt & Richard Shepard in Cult Fiction, 1998) Donald Goines was born in Detroit. He attended Catholic elementary school and was expected to go into his family's laundry business. Instead Goines enlisted in the US Air Force, but he had to lie his age to get in. He served from 1952 to 1955 in the army. During this period he started to use drugs. When he returned to civil life from Japan, he was a heroin addict.

  The next 15 years from 1955 Goines spent pimping, robbing, stealing, bootlegging, and running numbers, or doing time. His seven prison sentences totaled 6.5 years. While in jail he first attempted to write Westerns without much success. When he was introduced to the work of Iceberg Slim (Robert Beck), Goines wrote his semi-autobiographical novel Whoreson, which appeared in 1972. It was a story about the son of a prostitute who becomes a pimp. Goines was released in 1970, after which he published 16 novels with Holloway House. All of his books were paperback originals. They sold well but did not receive much critical attention. Goines' death was as harsh as his novels - he was shot death on October 21, 1974. According to some sources his death had something to do with a failed drugs deal.

  During his career as a writer, Goines worked to a strict timetable, writing in the morning, devoting the rest of the day to heroin. His pace was furious, sometimes he produced a book in a month. The stories were usually set in the black inner city, in Los Angeles, New York or Detroit, which then was becoming known as 'motor city'. Goines' serial hero, Kenyatta, was named after the 'father of Kenya', Jomo Kenyatta. The four-book series was published under the pseudonym Al C. Clark. Kenyatta is the leader of a militant organization which aims at cleaning American ghettos of drugs and prostitution. All white policemen also are his enemies. In the fourth book, Kenyatta's Last Hit (1975), the hero is killed in a shootout.

  Goines's style is unpolished, his language is a combination of Black English and rough American Standard English. His characters are likewise unpolished - pimps, prostitutes, thieves, hit men, dope addicts. They are people whose survival struggle in ghettos the author knew best. It has been easy for his readers, who have seen drug addicts and violence on the streets, to relate and identify with this stories. Also his style has been praised - "is so clear, its like you are apart of the story", "you can almost see the characters as you read the book," have Goines' fans said. Although Goines' world is violent, there is love as in his novel Daddy Cool (1974). In the story a hit man shows his feelings after a pimp has lured astray his beloved daughter.

  In the 80's and 90's, a new generation of African-Americans adopted Goines as part of their cultural heritage. In France the author gained a cult status and he was compared to Chester Himes. His works can be seen as a reflection of the anger and frustration of black people, and rejection of the values of the white society. But they also continue the tradition of ethnic crime fiction, in which the writer celebrates his or her own cultural heritage, practices linguistic innovations, and identifies with other minorities. Himes's Harlem series depicted tricksters, jive artists, hoodoo gurus, stoolies, junk men and hustlers. He started to write in the 1940's as a protégé of Richard Wright, whose Native Son (1940) can be read as a crime novel, like Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. When Himes's famous heroes, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, are police officers, working for the community, but always within their own code of justice, Goines did not compromise: his characters are criminals. But they had nothing in common with such white artificial elite villains, such as The Saint, or Jim Thompson's murdering sociopaths, or even with Ernest Tidyman's Shaft, "the black Mike Hammer." On the other hand, Walter Mosley has combined in the character of Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, conventions of mystery novels with insights of the social psychology of American ethnicity.

  For further reading: Donald Writers No More by Eddie Stone (1974); St. James Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers, ed. by Jay P. Pederson (1996); The Ethnic Detective: Chester Himes, Harry Kemelman, Tony Hillerman by Peter Freese (1992). - For further information: - Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins' Novels - Jomo Kenyatta (assumed name of Kamau Ngengi, c. 1894-1978). The first president of Kenya from 1964 until his death. Kenyatta was a member of the Kikuyu ethnic group. He was devoted to recovery of Kikuyu lands from white settlers. In 1953 he was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for his management of the guerrilla organization Mau Mau, though some doubt has been cast on his complicity. Kenyatta's slogans were 'Uhuru na moja' (Freedom and unity) and 'Harambee' (Let's get going). Selected works: