About the Author

Mitchell Duneier is professor of sociology at Princeton University and visiting distinguished professor of sociology at the City University of New York. Ovie Carter, who took the photographs used in this book, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for The Faces of Hunger.

Reviews

While a graduate student during the 1980s Duneier, who is white, hung out for four years with the black and white regulars at Valois Cafeteria, a restaurant on the fringes of the black ghetto on Chicago's South Side. Through his eyes we meet Slim, a reserved black car mechanic whose solicitude for Bart, a retired white file clerk from the rural South, strips the latter of his preconceptions about blacks. A moving testament to the power of integration over ingrained beliefs, this sensitive study reveals that the underclass has many faces. Unlike the ``outer-directed, attention-seeking'' black male stereotypes portrayed in sociology and the mass media, Duneier's African American cafeteria buddies are ``consistently inner-directed,'' deriving their sense of self-worth from adherence to personal standards of civility, solidarity, decency, pride and discretion. Duneier, who recently received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, shows how the collective life of the cafeteria helps its clientele overcome their sense of living in a moral vacuum. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)

This book deals with the lives of older working-class African American men of the South Side ghettos of Chicago. The author spent four years getting to know these men at their gathering place, the Valois ``see your food'' Cafeteria in Hyde Park. The men who comprise Slim's table are a representative group of employed, mainly single men living in rooms or small apartments. They exhibit tolerance and pride and demonstrate respect and civility toward others. The author believes that the way they live is a model for all races and hopes to refute media stereotypes by reporting the reality of their situations. The book is written for a college-educated audience. Recommended for large public libraries.-- Del Cain, V.A. Medical Ctr. Lib., Bedford, Mass.