The Portable Promised Land: Stories [Hardcover]

Touré (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2002

This inspired collection of stories is cause for celebration. With stunning language and dazzling characters, Touré introduces Soul City-a wholly imagined utopia where magic happens and black is beautiful. In a broad range of characterization and styles, The Portable Promised Land is filled with lighthearted humor and heavyhearted issues. Touré challenges form and what's considered politically correct in stories like The Sad, Sweet Story of Sugar Lips Shinehot and Afrolexicolgy Today's Bi-Annual List of the Top 50 Words in African America.

The Portable Promised Land marks the entrance of a new and wildly compelling voice to fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown; 1 edition (July 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316666432
• ISBN-13: 978-0316666435
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,005,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW, January 5, 2003

By 

K. Kimbrough "kkimbr7" (Bakersfield, Ca United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Portable Promised Land: Stories (Hardcover)

Oh WOW! Toure's The Portable Promise Land is summed up in one word, WOW - Wonderful One of a kind Writer!

This book of short stories is a trip into an alternate world where man's automobile systems are designed for Stevie Wonder (and that is not a bad thing), a church gathers in a Kentucky Fried Chicken building (Oh what a commentary), people are bound to stay in the playground of the blasé, and break ups are out in the open (no room for gossip here).

This collection of eclectic stories takes a real reader on a ride of renewed interest in creative writing with messages. In the land of relationship novels (which are not a bad thing) this book is refreshing. Toure is a truly talented writer with a lot to say. His stories are not only clever and entertaining but they require that you think while reading. He really challenges himself in his writing with word choices and word play. In his story "A Guest", he tells one story in short simple sentences that all begin with "A". His story "The Break-up Ceremony" (which I suggested that a friend put in an anthology he created for his writing class) is an interesting view of a public ceremony announcing the break up of a relationship. This was one of the best stories in the collection.

My angst with this collection of stories is he strays from prose into listings. Although they are appropriate for his thematic scheme, I felt they took away from the flow of the book. Also some of his stories have so many layers that re-reading may be necessary (but I guess that is not always a bad thing). My true rating would be a 4.5 but since halves are not offered I do not feel it generous to give it a five. This is a highly recommended read.

Kotanya
APOOO BookClub

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Portable Pleasure, August 7, 2002

By 

"catherineo" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Portable Promised Land: Stories (Hardcover)

The Portable Promised Land is portable laughter, portable epiphany, and a portable good time. I brought it up to my roof and read some of it aloud to my roomate. I read one story to my boyfriend. This book wanted, begged even, to be shared aloud. I laughed at Toure's caricatures of black urban life (the redundancy of fast food fried chicken chains in Brooklyn), at his crazy imagination (an enormous preacher jumps into the air and hovers fifty feet above his congregation) and at the strokes of linguistic genius that elevate a story from the merely entertaining to a seriously sweet read. I also like that his "Afrolexicology" list includes "Vodou" - spelled according to proper Haitian Creole.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Touré's Tour de Force, October 16, 2005

By 

Kathleen S. Osta "KO" (Asheville, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Portable Promised Land: Stories (Paperback)

I bought this book for the story "Solomon's Big Day" which I heard read on NPR and was totally taken with and stayed in my car to hear the end of. The story is a great description of a young boy's creative spirit and his close call with fame. Though clearly fiction, it's not that far off from what I imagine to be reality.

Then, there's the rest of the book and all the other captivating stories! Touré's ability to create a mood and draw me in is like going on a series of mini-vacations to other worlds. I'm so pleased to know of his existence and will track his future work.