The Portable Promised Land: Stories

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.

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.KotanyaAPOOO BookClub

Oh my...so many stories ...so many different voices...even though the author was what I would call "tripping"..he hit the nail on the head....over and over again. And yes the writing is brilliant...It's one of the best books I've read in a long time...enjoy...

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.

This book is a tasty honey pot for your imagination.The author is dealing with a genre that, in my opinion, has been drastically in need of a spark plug change. And this book does just that. The Portable Promised Land is a magic-fantastical tour of the Hip-Hop Experience, the Black Experience, and most importantly, the intelligent American Experience.The book begins with resources usually covered ad nausea by "hip-hop" books: the slang, the icons of Black history and pop culture, the fashion, the Djs, the dystopia, Etc. etc. But Portable Promised Land wins because it proceeds to grind these icons through the mill of examination, through a comic and tragic surreal trip that places its mini Black Epics (Brooklyn Renaissances?) into contexts that beat alive in your heart through their familiarity. This is no cool-prose-in-a-Last-Poets-cadence. This book is Gabriel Garcia Marquez telling you stories about why Tupac Shakur could set a dry barn on his fire with his soul. It's a smart book that doesn't insult your intelligent, or your integrity, but being "just" about Hip-Hop. It's really just a great and varied collection of impossible tales.Highly recommended.