Behind the Eight Ball: Sex for Crack Cocaine Exchange and Poor Black Women

by Tanya Telfair Sharpe

Inner-city black women open their hearts to share the pain of crack addiction and its consequences

Behind the Eight Sex for Crack Cocaine Exchange and Poor Black Women documents an American tragedy that highlights the widening gap between social and economic classes. In their own words, poor black womennameless, faceless, and marginalized by povertyshare the details of their lives before and after crack cocaine invaded their communities, each recalling the circumstances of her introduction to the drug and her first experience using sex to support her addiction. These candid interviews expose the socioeconomic changes in inner-city neighborhoods that created the perfect conditions for a crack stronghold; the crack cocaine economy's impact on the lives of inner-city residents; and the social and familial consequences of crack addiction among poor, black women.

Behind the Eight Sex for Crack Cocaine Exchange and Poor Black Women places crack addiction, crack-related prostitution and its consequences, STDs, HIV, and pregnancy into the context of the larger social issues of inner-city poverty, race, gender, and class. This unique book reveals the sex-for-crack barter system as evidence of a long-term social exclusion and systemic racism that has worked to destroy the self-image of poor black American women. The women interviewed reflect this negative image, exchanging sex for crack on a regular basis to support their addictions at the risk-and reality-of unplanned pregnancies.

The baby I am carrying now, I don’t know who the father is. There are a few (men) that I had sex with around the time I got pregnantthat day. But which one it is, I don’t know who.

Behind the Eight Sex for Crack Cocaine Exchange and Poor Black Women Behind the Eight Sex for Crack Cocaine Exchange and Poor Black Women is an insightful and enlightening look at the motivations behind the decision to risk illness, injury, disease, death, and pregnancy to support addiction.

262 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Kim]

A book that attempts to address gender, social, and racial issues in addition to detailing crack addiction among poor black women. I suspect, however, that this book was a paper padded out to be a book - it's dogged by tons of repetition (so much so that I actually lost my place occasionally because it seemed that entire paragraphs in one chapter were lifted from another), and, in some places, ancient research (citing papers from the 1930s / 1940s - the problem with using such old documentation in regards to social movements / changes is just that - they change, and what may have held true 50 years ago may not be the case now, so using it heavily is...ehhhhh. But this is me nitpicking). I honestly believe that the section she has devoted to tracing the social origins of the decline of the black nuclear family (which, to be fair, can be argued is a recent social construct and not one that has historically been in place, even beyond the Diaspora) could be a book in and out of itself. As it is, she has this wonderfully thought provoking introduction that could have been whittled down to a paragraph or two to further bolster her own argument / study. Overall, though, it definitely provides the reader with much food for thought.