The Portable Promised Land

May 27, 2002
Touré 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." Touré 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. (July 1)Forecast:City markets in particular should do well with this clever collection, and the
Rolling Stone connection may help boost sales. Touré's fiction and essays have been widely published elsewhere, too (the
New Yorker,
Zoetrope), and his pop-star one-word name is nicely catchy.

March 15, 2002
Work by Toure, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, has appeared in Best American Essays of 1999 and Best American Sports Writing 2000. And if that doesn't convince you to pick up this collection, maybe his having won Zoetrope's Sam Adams Story Contest will. The setting? Soul City, where everything dazzles and black is beautiful.

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2002
Soul City is a colorful place, with a flying reverend, a black man who can't see white people, basketball players with voodoo shoes, and a militant hip-hop star who, deep down, thinks she's an "Oreo." Perhaps staking out new ground for magical realism, Toure creates in his short stories a vibrant African American metropolis where stereotypes are reclaimed and transformed to artfully address the politics and construction of race. "A Hot Time at the Church of Kentucky Fried Souls and the Spectacular Final Sunday Sermon of the Right Revren Daddy Love" fondly tweaks religion through a minister with enormous appetites; the brief, touching "Blackmanwalkin" shares a small boy's reverie at watching the way his father struts down the street; "The Sambomorphosis" is a daring, funny parable with a shout-out to Kafka. Although these delightful works practically beg to be read aloud, several must work better on stage than on the page.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)