From Amazon.com
Soul City, a place where racial divisions are juxtaposed and black love flows freely, is the main setting for
The Portable Promised Land, a debut collection of short stories by Touré. Buoyant and edged with magical realism, stories such as "The Steviewondermobile"; "A Hot Time at the Church of Kentucky Fried Souls and the Spectacular Final Sermon of the Right Revren Daddy Love"; and "The Sad, Sweet Story of Sugar Lips Shinehot, the Man with the Portable Promised Land" are moving testaments to the urban black experience, comingling or interchanging music, religion, and human failings with dramatic and comic effect. We are told: "No matter how rotund she was Daddy Love could still hug her in surround-sound stereo because Daddy Love was super-sized as though God had intended him to be literally larger than life." And, when Sugar Lips Shinehot dare ask the price of boundless freedom (by eliminating all white men) offered to him by Reverend Scratch (a.k.a. the Devil) and is chided for doing so, Sugar Lips simply replies, "If you from Harlem you do." These main stories are fresh and earnest, and well worth reading.
The rest of the collection, however, is a mixed bag. A triptych of the Black Widow, a female hip-hop militant-gangsta out to turn the world of the white folks (or MCs--Melatonin Challenged) upside down, is sensationalist but falls flat, and several of the pieces rely on catalogs of pop culture references, words and phrases in the black lexicon, or amateurish listing. While the delivery may be messy, the ideas are clear and important--from what America would be like in a black-dominated society to interracial relationships to the importance and beauty of black language. As Touré notes: "When you a Negro white folk is like doors. You got to go though them to get most anywhere." --Michael Ferch
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Tour‚ takes a measured yet whimsical look at the ups and (more often) downs of modern African-American life and culture in his successful debut collection of stories, lists and essays, most of which use racial stereotypes as their jumping-off point. He gets things off to a funny start with "The Steviewondermobile," a snappy yarn about a resident of the mythical Soul City named Huggy Bear Jackson, who installs in his Cadillac a state-of-the-art sound system that will play only the blind soul singer's tunes. "Attack of the Love Dogma" takes a pointedly satiric tack as it portrays a detox center where black men are slowly weaned of their "Blonde Obsession," while "A Hot Time at the Church of Kentucky Fried Souls..." finds one Daddy Love setting up a chapel in an abandoned restaurant formerly run by "that good ol neo-massa Colonel Sanders." Tour‚ displays a fine eye and ear for language in a pair of word-based conceits, "Afrolexicology Today's Bi-Annual List of the Top 50 Words in African-America" and "The African-American Aesthetics Hall of Fame." His over-the-top sense of humor serves him well, although occasionally his sharp but somewhat hyperactive style gets away from him, most notably in a trilogy of stories about a female hip-hopper-cum-ghetto guerrilla named the Black Widow that degenerate into facile diatribes on racial politics. A few missteps aside, this respected essayist and Rolling Stone editor should find an enthusiastic audience for his lively brand of social commentary.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
