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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Warning: Not For the Weak In Spirit, November 7, 2004
This review is from: Soul City (Hardcover)
Soul City is an ambitious novel written by an equally ambitious young man. In his second fictional offering, Touré employs his gift of a fertile imagination along with natural pop culturist abilities, to take the reader on a magical sojourn through the culture of black America. In this African-American utopia, named Soul City, the essence of blackness is defined through music and folklore. There are streets named "Groove Street" and "Downhome Drive", where giant roses and violets spring out of sidewalks that thump to the sounds of whatever the Mayor happens to be spinning. For the pavements are fitted with speakers, and the Mayor's only real duty is to DJ, thus providing the town with its own ever-changing soundtrack. But even utopias have to shed their paradisiacal qualities once in a while, and it isn't long before reality finds its way into fantasy, allowing for the more real and negative aspects of human nature to emerge. However, the cyclical tradition of life purports that what destroys can also build. The resilient powers of human nature are what see the city through a hard time, while its loving qualities are what aid in the city's resurrection. The book is an interweaving of fables with an underlying message that is difficult to ignore. Touré plays into social and racial stereotypes as a means of highlighting the disturbing socio-political state of race in America, and a few of the characters in Soul City go further in demonstrating how some of these stereotypes are perpetuated and kept alive. Soul City is laugh out loud funny, and while entertaining, it also manages to provoke thought within the reader. A book that can be appreciated by older and younger generations alike, Soul City is as timeless in spirit as the audience it will attract.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My Soul Looks Back in Wonder.., September 1, 2004
This review is from: Soul City (Hardcover)
The first few pages of Toure's masterful new novel took me back to the first time I saw a Spike Lee movie (School Daze, 1988). It was a well-crafted, perfectly-told inside joke and I was on the inside. Like Spike Lee, Toure's world-view is not only unquestionably Black but based in the time before Blackness was so often equated with nihilistic despair. Soul City snatched me out of my own hectic life which involves too many frequent-flyer miles and too few homemade biscuits and plopped me down in Toure's utopian vision. Interestingly, once I arrived, I had the feeling of returning to a place I had once loved but had not visited in a long time. The best literature forces you to reexamine your life. Soul City makes me want to turn my car into a RobertaFlackmobile, crank up the volume and dance on the hood with a well-shaped Black woman until a 350-year-old grandmother tells us to " Git the ---- down from there." Toure celebrates Black culture the way I wish more of us did and arms me with renewed strength to withstand the onslaught of the diamond-studded minstrels who are turning our people into a cartoon. I bought Soul City and Jill Scott's new CD at the same time and finished Soul City before I even removed the plastic from the CD. From me, there can be no higher praise. Buy two copies of this book. The first is to read and reread until it is a worn as my first copy of the Portable Promised Land. Wrap the second copy in cellophane to keep as a family heirloom which your great-grandchildren can discover someday and learn why despite the drama and the hardships, African-Americans live with such joy.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
exhilarating allegorical tale, September 1, 2004
This review is from: Soul City (Hardcover)
Chocolate City Magazine sends journalist Cadillac Jackson on the soul train to write a short piece on the mayoral election in Soul City. Though his assignment is expected to last three days, Cadillac has ambitions that only residents of the City would have; he plans to write the definitive book on the city with more Mojo than any other in the world. In his opinion others have tried to explain the heart of Soul City, but all have failed. Cadillac observes the mayoral race in which the parties serve up their musical platforms, but also sees the undercurrent of antagonism between the rivals in what is the supposed African-American utopia. He sees, hears and tastes the true culture and feels his heart go into palpitations when he meets resident Mahogany Sunflower. However, as Cadillac falls in love, he also realizes evil is undercutting the value of being a black man as thugs, like serpents in Eden, and a billionaire business bogie threaten the well being of the proud black culture tearing at the soul that makes Soul City dance to its own drummer. SOUL CITY is an exhilarating allegorical tale that satirizes racial stereotypes through hyperbole. The effervescent well written story line contains an intriguing comparison of a pure "cornbread" society through the eyes of a white toasted outsider. Ironically, the overstatement jabs the message into the reader's face without the swift subtly of A Modest Proposal, but also hooks the audience with its strong spirit to embrace difference. Harriet Klausner
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