Daddy Cool, Goines Donald Jr.

All those other black] writers, no matter how well they dealt with black experience, appealed largely to an educated, middle-class, largely white readership. They brought news of one place to the residents of another. Goines novels, on the other hand, are written from ground zero. They are almost unbearable. It is not the educated voice of a writer who has, so to speak, risen above his background, it is the voice of the ghetto itself. --Michael Covino, The Village Voice