Tale from the Streets of Harlem

My favorite book of all time is Ann Petry's The Street. It was published in 1946, and Petry became the first African-American author to sell over a million books. If you want to feel like you're a witness to the characters' lives, then I suggest that you pick up this book ASAP. The beginning of the novel grabs you:

There was a cold November wind blowing through 116th Street. It rattled the tops of garbage cans, sucked window shades out through the top of opened windows and set them flapping back against the windows; and it drove most of the people off the street in the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues except for a few hurried pedestrians who bent double in an effort to offer the least possible exposed surface to its violent assault.