Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing Justin Gifford. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2013.In Pimping Fictions, Justin Gifford examines the African-American crime fiction genre, which has existed since at least the 1920s. His focus is particularly on the period after the World War II, especially the 1960s and onward. Although much has been written on African American writers of the mid to late twentieth century, scholarship on popular street literature authored by African is limited. He introduces the crime fiction genre to the existing scholarship on slave narratives, Harlem Renaissance, protest novels of the mid-twentieth century, and a more recent focus on hip hop generation writers. As the title of the book suggests, Gifford is particularly interested in characters such pimps, sex workers, drug dealers, hustlers, and criminals representations of African American resistance to American establishment well the harsh living reality of street corners, prisons, and the urban environment.Gifford is equally interested in the role of the publishing industry. He argues that Holloway House Publishing Company, a white-operated firm, even faced racism by white book sellers who argued that Blacks don't read (49). But Bentley Morriss and Ralph Weinstock, founders of the press and Hollywood publicists, successfully expanded their market penetration from Los Angeles and Hollywood to a national scale. Although an increasing number of books by African-American authors was good news, AfricanAmerican writers had to balance their commercial success with the generation of independent AfricanAmerican art. The author explains that the publisher secured its reputation as the world's leading publisher of black crime novels by selling an image of ghetto authenticity to working-class African Americans (73). The popularity of the genre, on the one hand, indicated increased publishing opportunities for Black writers. On the other hand, these writers were well aware that profits were being made by commodifying African American criminal experiences. This racial dynamic is one of the reasons why Gifford characterizes the Black pulp fiction a cultural and social movement, in addition to its being a literary one. The book locates Black crime literature within the social context of the post-World War II US. From urban renewal policies to continuing segregation and mass incarceration of Blacks, African faced social injustices. …