Born on October 27, 1943, as George Maurice Hopkins, he would adopt the pen name Africa Cain, later choosing to use his original first name.
He grew up in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan and moved with his family to Teaneck, New Jersey after graduating from the McBurney School, which he attended on scholarship.
His basketball skills earned him a scholarship at Iona College, but he dropped out as a junior and headed to the American Southwest.
[1] The book describes how Cain's middle-class parents moving to the suburbs only to find themselves "surrounded, hounded and harassed by the white mob".
Reviewer Addison Gayle, Jr., of The New York Times called the book "the most important work of fiction by an Afro-American since Native Son", describing "a world that only black people can fully comprehend", written in "a language that abounds in colorful in-group symbols and metaphors".