The Dirty South

By Alex Wheatle and Alex Brown

Book Overview

"One of the most exciting writers of the black urban experience."-- The Times (London) The mean streets of south London offer little hope for young black guys. Selling drugs, on the other hand, offers quick money and respect. Dennis Huggins finds himself drawn into the spiral in this powerful portrayal of gang life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1852429852
• ISBN13: 9781852429850
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Sublime Brixton novel

This is an excellent novel by Alex Wheatle. Dennis Huggins lives in one of the more bourgeois streets of Brixton, and his parents, unlike many of his peers', are still together. His parents also have good jobs, especially his mother, who works as a legal secretary. However, his father is crippled due to a violent incident from his youth, and Dennis is fascinated by the idea that his father may have been a gangster. Although Dennis's home background has set him far in advance of his peers at school, he does get bored very quickly by the very limited lessons that are provided at his school, and mucks around while the other students struggle. Dennis's father has ambitions of him becoming a professor, although Dennis is put off by his nagging, but it appears that his sister Davinia has picked up the academic gene. Not sharing his father's vision, Dennis leaves school to become a drug dealer, although he does also work in a garage. He and his best friend, Noel, shun hard drugs, and learn to avoid selling to other black men, as this is too risky. However, it's not all doom and gloom for Dennis, as he sets his heart on the beautiful and articulate Akeisha. Yet the pervading ghetto culture that surrounds him very much influences the way that he treats women, to detrimental effect... Although Dennis would appear to have more choices than his best friend Noel, he doesn't choose to leave the path that he has always followed, despite being on the receiving end of a violent beating due to it. One of the main themes in the novel is how the culture in Brixton is very much changing, as the local community gradually transforms from being West Indian in character, to African Muslim. Dennis is amazed to see how many Christian peers from his schooldays have taken up Islam, seemingly as a way of rebelling, even although they don't appear to be all that popular within the local Muslim culture either. Despite their religious conversions, Dennis's Muslim peers are just as in thrall to the power of money as he, which sets them on course for a very violent confrontation... Alex Wheatle is a very accomplished writer indeed, although it was a bit cheeky of him to include his MC alter ego, Yardman Irie, in the novel! All in all, The Dirty South is a truly brilliant novel told in the Brixton vernacular. The Dirty South very much makes me want to hunt down Wheatle's previous books, especially since the events of East of Acre Lane seem to have been referred to.

Concrete Jungle

Where Colin MacInness' "London Trilogy" (City of Spades, Absolute Beginners, Mr. Love and Justice) documented the struggles of the first wave of West Indian immigrants to London in the late 1950s, this latest novel from native Brixtonian Wheatle attempts to chart the pitfalls of growing up young, semi-gifted, and black in new millennium. Actually, this could probably also be considered the third in Wheatle's own trilogy, as his earlier book East of Acre Lane is about the first wave of immigrants in the '50s/'60s, and his more recent book Island Songs is about the second generation, which came of age in the early '80s. Here, the story follows Dennis, the solidly middle-class teenage son of Jamaican parents who were born and raised in London. Although he's reasonably sharp, and his parents push him to learn about the historical and class struggles of his ancestors, he's more interested in makin' Ps (money), woking buff b------ (having sex with good-looking women), and maintaining street cred. To that end, he goes along with his best friend Noel's plan to become shottas (independent drug dealers). Now, Noel actually comes from a hard-knock life, and has ample reason to head down the gangster's path -- but for Dennis, this choice is a lot more complicated. The story does a fairly god job of painting a picture of how even those from solid backgrounds can get sucked into the dominant street culture of posing and thuggery. However, at the same time, Dennis and Noel's story is somewhat cliche -- and in a way, becomes a bit of a morality play. Similarly, Dennis' pursuit of a beautiful woman follows a certain predictable path as he must learn to put away his ghetto posing in order to win her heart. Still, despite the relatively obvious path the story takes, there are plenty of insider details about life on the mean streets on London to keep an outsider like me engaged. Of particular interest are the dynamics between the "native" West Indian Brixtonians, and the fresh wave of immigrants from places like Nigeria, Eritrea, Kosovo, etc. Even more interesting is the phenomenon of young men from Dennis' background turning to Islam as a method of rebellion, and the threat posed by these new quasi-Muslim youth gangs. On the whole, a quick read that's worth picking up by anyone with an interest in British youth culture, or parts of London not generally covered by guidebooks. Note: Wheatle makes a semi-cameo in the book as "Yardman Irie."