The Basketball Diaries: The Classic About Growing Up Hip On New York’s Mean Streets

Jim Carroll is the narrator of The Basketball Diaries. He is 13 years old when the entries begin in 1963 and 16 when they end in 1966. Jim spends the first half of his youth in the lower east side of New York City and is shaped by the culture there. Ignored and disliked by his family, Jim spends most of his time on the streets with his friends, earning money for drugs or using them. Even when Jim is offered a scholarship to a privileged Catholic school, he cannot avoid drug culture. Instead, he regularly visits his friends to do drugs and play basketball—none of whom are particularly significant and serve more as catalysts for certain events. Jim does not get attached to people or his surroundings because he views his existence as fleeting. War is all around him and seems to be never-ending, leaving him to believe he will not live long.

Jim has two hobbies outside of his street life: basketball and writing. Basketball is Jim’s escape from the chaos of the streets and political climate. He plays with people of all creeds and races despite racism being heavily accepted at the time. It is through basketball that Jim meets most of his friends. As for writing, Jim’s scholarship was earned through his skill. He enjoys writing, using introspection and the vernacular of street culture to explore his thoughts (i.e., diary entries and poetry). Jim is also enthusiastic about sex and engages in it with people his own age as well as with adult men and women. He is a risk-taker who will do anything to achieve his goals—but is also vehemently against the government and war, believing that people should be allowed to live free of their fearmongering.

Jim transforms throughout his autobiography in both positive and negative ways. Because Jim writes from his own perspective, he seems to move the world around him rather than be moved by it. Even in the face of drug addiction, deaths of friends, parental neglect, street life, and jail, he is rarely rattled and always confident. Jim seems to be acutely aware that the world is a corrupt place, but rather than be upset by this, he uses said corruption to his advantage. Although Jim slips deeper into addiction as his entries progress, he also becomes more enthusiastic about writing, eventually deciding to become a professional writer. He knows his youth was not the pleasant picture often associated with childhood and sets out to prove this, to share his own story with the world.