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Cain, George (1943– )
Harlem-born George Cain attended public and
private schools in New York City. Although he at-
tended Iona College in New Rochelle on an ath-
letic scholarship, he left during his junior year and
traveled to California, Mexico, and Texas, where
he was imprisoned. After his release, he returned
to New York, where he wrote his autobiographical
novel, Blueschild Baby (1970), revealing his painful
and self-destructive life as a heroin addict and his
effort to become and stay clean.
Blueschild Baby begins with George, the protag-
onist, experiencing withdrawal while desperately
searching for a fix and fearing an encounter with
the police, as he is a parolee who has no desire to
return to prison. “A sickness comes over me in this
twilight state, somewhere between wake and sleep,
my nose runs and my being screams for heroin”
(1), announces the narrator at the beginning, set-
ting in motion the roller-coaster ride that lasts the
entire length of the novel. Through the narrator’s
eyes, the reader experiences firsthand the subter-
ranean labyrinth of Harlem’s drug world and its
concomitant illegal activities and behavior, includ-
ing robbery, rape, murder, exploitation, deception,
looting, and strains of animalistic instinct-related
behavior: Everyone struggles to be among the sur-
viving fit. In this “land of black people” (9), build-
ings are inhabited by “people trying to escape the
day. On every landing they sat. Men and women

alone, together, bowed heads, smelling of them-

selves and cheap wine” (22). Imprisoned by fate in

their jungle existence, these “dead people” some-

times rebel, as their history of riots reveals, in-

cluding the Newark riot of the 1960s, which Cain

chronicles.

In recalling his childhood, however, and par-

ticularly his love for his grandmother, Nana; his

close relationship with his parents, particularly his

mother; and his first love, Nandy, who “fired [his

life] with purpose” (150), George reveals that this

environment was not always a tomb for the living.

As he successfully navigates through several criti-

cal rites of passage that lead to young adulthood

and manhood, George attends the prestigious

and “very private” Brey Academy, proudly wear-

ing the school blazer, where he “loved the library

with endless volumes, furnished darkly, mahogany,

musty, and dim. Giant windows looking on the

street and park” (157). At Brey he excels in aca-

demics and sports. His proud black community,

which “watched and prayed” over him, consider

him “the chosen one” (160). When the building

he was born in burns for the second time, pre-

cipitating the death of his grandmother, George,

feeling defeated, abandons his near-stellar youth

and promising future and walks directly into what

seems like the inevitable: a life of drug abuse. He,

too, will become one of the “dead people.” How-

ever, convincing himself that he is “[t]rapped in a



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