City Kid: A Writer’s Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success

City Kid is perhaps one of the seven greatest books ever written. It has the realness of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the warmth of The Color Purple, and the page count of Tuesdays with Morrie. It’s a must read. -Chris Rock

From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series, The Get Down, an affecting memoir of his coming of age.

Nelson George was the nerd of his ghetto neighborhood; the kid who devoured Captain America comics, Ernest Hemingway novels, and album liner notes. City Kid describes how George evolved into an award-winning journalist and filmmaker, becoming a key figure in framing hip hop for the rest of us. The story begins with a fractured family life-an absent father, a struggling single mother, and a sister who falls victim to the streets-but ends in triumph all around.

George overcomes both his own nerdiness, as well as the odds against him, to become a godfather of the hip hop movement-he was there at the beginning, and in City Kid he tells us what it was really like.

Writing with emotion, but without false sentiment, George creates an insightful and inspirational portrait of an emerging success, as well as the triumphant rise of hip hop culture and black artists in the 80s and 90s.