So you know this lost black girl will have a bad end before you ever crack the spine. The "Rape and Murder!" -- do not omit the exclamation point -- right on the cover kinda drives that point home. And in a quick 184 pages we get hunger, deep poverty, shoplifting, the possibility of rape, some rape, unquestionable rape, crack dealing, crack using, theft, child abuse, alcoholism, juvie, murder with a gun, a knife, bare hands, police brutality and probably some other stuff I'm not remembering right now, but believe me it was some bad times. Like a ghetto Romeo and Juliet, the purity of love is snuffed too soon by hot tempers and the urge for bloody revenge. Despite all the hellish conditions and criminal hijinks, there is time to get to know and appreciate Sandra and her monkeylove, Chink. But there is simply no way to make me comfortable with her habit of calling her 16-year-old boyfriend "Daddy"; That may have been the hardest thing for me to stomach.
Goines wrote nine novels in the same year that he wrote Black Girl Lost, 16 novels in only a five-year span. Some of it was written in prison and some of it was while he was using heroin. He died of a gunshot wound, presumably from a drug deal gone wrong. I mention all of this because I think it's important to note that Goines is pretty much an expert on ghetto life, and his novels are nothing if not honest. Sensational, yes, but also insightful. Goines was a Detroit-born, heroin-addicted thief, smuggler, pimp and numbers runner, but at the same time he was aware enough to paint a picture of purity and innocence that was his character Sandra, and how her life could have been beautiful if not for the scourge that fed on her family and community. He clearly points to the choices Sandra made and that were made for her that caused her own ruin. And that's what's so fascinating -- this man on the inside pulling all the stitches out so we can see how it all came together. And because of that I think this is important reading for any young person intrigued by black urban culture and the temptations of easy money. Perhaps there's a glimpse here and there of triumph and victory for our thug hero, but, in the end, every single person dies. Dead. Even the one person he swore he'd protect. Oh, uh, spoiler alert.