The Portable Promised Land

by Touré

Genres: Humor & Satire; Literary Fiction; Short Stories

Synopsis

This inspired collection of stories is cause for celebration. With stunning language and dazzling characters, Toure 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. Toure 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.

Release date: June 27, 2009

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 278

Sample

The Portable Promised Land

“An audacious and inventive debut....A mix of ancestor worship and irreverent wit.... The reader feels a bracing, biting gust
of literary fresh air....Touré has a broad, idiosyncratic imagination.... His stories have a conceptual virtuosity....He not
only acknowledges the ticklish no man’s land between vulgar stereotype and observable reality, he revels in it.... “Sambormorphosis”
is a masterpiece of racial satire.... The Portable Promised Land is hugely enjoyable, and a spectacularly odd duck.... Buy the book.”


— Jake Lamar, Washington Post Book World

“Another Langston Hughes in the making?...Touré introduces us to Soul City — a wholly imagined utopia where magic happens
and black is beautiful — in his debut short story collection.”


— Dan Santow, Chicago Tribune

“One of the best short story collections since Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak! Touré anchors the volume in Soul City, a place not unlike the Land of Oz, where anything can happen and humanity reigns supreme.”


— Patrick Henry Bass, Essence

“Hip-hop culture gets both glorified and sent up, sometimes in the same sentence....Agreeably shocking, sharply perceptive,
quite funny.”


— Kirkus Reviews

“Touré’s writing is fresh and exhilarating.... The Portable Promised Land mixes the everyday black experience with magic realism to create thought-provoking and oftentimes laugh-out-loud selections
that will surely appeal to a broad audience.”


— Mondella Jones, Black Issues Book Review

“This collection of stories, vignettes, and essays is a sharp celebration of black urban life, filled with characters at once
surreal and familiar....Touré has given life in Soul City a comic edge, revealing the humor and absurdities behind the seriousness
of race. Even the author’s note and acknowledgments are fun to read.”


— Ellen Flexman, Library Journal

“Perhaps staking out new ground for magical realism, Touré 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.... These delightful
works practically beg to be read aloud....Touré is a talent to watch.”


— Keir Graff, Booklist

“A comedic, sarcastic, yet serious, open look at the experiences of being black in America.... These fictional tales are rooted
in what has shaped the way we talk, walk, love, fight, laugh, and live....Touré stamps The Portable Promised Land with his trademark wit and lively descriptions that ensure a funny, fast-paced, and thrilling read.... Even if you are not
able to personally relate to the characters, they will still keep you turning the pages.”


— Ines Bebea, Caribbean Life

“Charismatic, riotous, and impeccably original prose.”

— Meredith Broussard, Philadelphia City Paper

“A refreshing, humorous look at African American life.”

— Crisis

“A vibrantly imagined African American metropolis.... Infused with energetic wit and ever-resilient humor, Touré’s collection
of stories turns stereotypes inside out to celebrate the soulful heart of black culture.”


— Sarah Gianelli, Portland Oregonian

“As supple as a Bootsy Collins bass line thumping out a ’77 Oldsmobile, The Portable Promised Land isn’t so much a collection of stories as a freestyle riff on the ways of black folks. A mix of urban folk tales, essays,
and lists, this zesty debut by Rolling Stone contributing editor Touré boasts the social provocations of a Gil Scott-Heron song, while capturing the celebratory lunacy
of a four-hour P-Funk jam. Touré, long respected as a music journalist, establishes himself as a vital new voice in fiction.
Popping with energy and edginess, The Portable Promised Land is an inspired ode to the methods and madness of those who know that black isn’t just a matter of race — it’s a state of
mind, a state of grace.”


— Renée Graham, Boston Globe

“I’ve been waiting a long time for an African-American to write inventive, edgy, sexy, magical, whimsical, funny, and smart
stories that challenge the form, stereotypes of black people, display the beauty of black speech, and in a very subliminal
manner, through it all, manages to sneak in and address the politics of race in the fabulously imagined utopia called Soul
City. Touré has broken new ground with this collection because he breaks all the rules, which makes it that much more refreshing.
He’s a smart, edgy, risking-taking young writer, so watch him. The ride is wild!”


— Terry McMillan

“Whimsical... funny... satiric....A lively brand of social commentary.”

— Publishers Weekly

“Vivid urban folktales....A debut collection that limns with a fine confidence and cheeky humor the fabulous, the fantastical,
the incantatory....In Soul City, the sublime and the ridiculous knock boots.... The stories here — with their flip-o’-the-script
comeuppances and Technicolor folly — could be called morality tales. Except judgment and superiority get tossed on their butts
by the vibrant, the messy, the absurd. Not that the author’s wry fondness for his characters stops him from wrestling with
their contradictions.”


— Lisa Kennedy, Village Voice

“Fantastic tales.”

— BookForum

There is a certain kind of moment that happens in life from time to time. A moment of strangeness that makes you say truth
is stranger than fiction, a moment that, if it occurred in fiction, you might say, oh that writer is being lazy, her imagination
didn’t work hard enough. I love these moments. And they happen every day. In a single day’s New York Times I found these: “Several [NBA basketball] players are continuing to discuss using their flesh as human billboards.... [that
means] putting temporary tattoos of brand logos on their arms.” And this: “A former NASA employee... plunked down $20 million
for a spin aboard [the Russian Space Station] Mir.” And: “Scientists say evidence is mounting that... cloning is more difficult
than they had expected....In one example that seems like science fiction come true, some cloned mice that appeared normal
suddenly, as young adults, grew grotesquely fat.” And: “Once a month Didier, a clean-cut thirty-seven-year-old government
worker, stops by a little shop called Growland [which] sells hemp products and is listed in the telephone directories under
Cannibis.” And this one which I wish I’d written: “Charles K. Johnson, president of the International Flat Earth Research
Society... who stubbornly and cheerfully insisted that those who believed the earth was round had been duped, died on Monday....He
was 76. Jill Fear [my kinda name!], secretary of the society,... said she would try to carry on his mission of promoting the
view that the world was actually a flat disk floating on primordial waters....Mr. Johnson, who called himself the last iconoclast,
regarded scientists as witch doctors pulling off a gigantic hoax so as to replace religion with science.... [He once told
Newsweek magazine], ‘If Earth were a ball spinning in space, there would be no up or down.’” It seems that Mr. Johnson believed sunrises
and sunsets to be optical illusions and the moon landing an elaborate hoax staged in a hangar in Arizona. There is nothing
so strange that it’s unrealistic. Magic realism lives among us.


TOURÉ

Soul City, USA

July 2002

Every day downtown Soul City saw Huggy Bear Jackson smooth by in that pristine money-green 1983 Cadillac Cutlass Supreme custom
convertible with gold rims, neon-green lights underneath, and a post-state-of-the-art Harmon Kardon system with sixteen speakers,
wireless remote, thirty-disc changer, and the clearest sound imaginable. If during the recording of the song the guitarist
had plucked the wrong string, he could hear it. If someone had coughed in the control room, he could hear it. If the singers
were thinking, he could hear it. Everyone in Soul City waved as he crept slowly by, cruising at fifteen miles an hour or less,
passed by joggers, and as he turtled into the distance, people said with awe and condescension, “There goes the Steviewondermobile.”


Yes, Huggy Bear’s ride elicited an encyclopedia of emotions because, despite an eye-paining beauty that would’ve put the vehicle
directly into the African-American Aesthetics Hall of Fame, there were significant problems with the ride.


First off, he drove slowly because he had to. No matter how long and hard he pressed the gas the thing would not go above
twenty-five miles an hour. Also, the electrical system was so taxed by the sound system that there were brownouts when the
car would only go ten or fifteen miles an hour, and blackouts where the car would just stop cold, maybe right in the middle
of Freedom Ave or Funky Boulevard. And that $25,000 sound system only played songs by Stevie Wonder. He’d had it built like
that. There was a special sensor they sold at Soul City Systems and when you put in a non-Stevie record it was promptly spit
out. He didn’t know if records that Stevie had written and not performed or records such as “We Are the World” on which Stevie
had had a tiny part would work. He didn’t ask and he never tried.


The ride had attained its vehicular elegance and superior sound because Huggy Bear had put a bank-draining amount of cash
into it. It had massive problems because he was very picky about what he spent his money on. If the carburetor was falling
apart and needed only $600 to be like new and Dolemite Jones from Soul City Systems called and said he had a new subwoofer,
the best ever made, just $2,000, you can guess what he chose to do. Huggy Bear was what your momma would call “nigga-rich.”
Someone with, say, a multithousand-dollar neck chain and nothing in the bank. Someone with a hot Lexus who lives with they
moms.


So he cruised with Stevie every day. Stevie fit every mood. If he felt upbeat and wanted to groove, he pushed button number
one and Stevie preached: “Very supa-stish-uuus.. .” If he felt sad it was number seventeen: “Lately I have had the strangest
feeling... .” When he had his sweet, late mother on his mind he soothed her memory with number twelve: “You are the sunshine
of my life. . .” When thinking politics, number seventy-three: “Living for the City.” Every June first, as the sun sang out
and the days got hot, number 129: “Ma cher-ee a-mour...” When he started a new relationship, number ninety-seven: “Send her
your love... .” Yes, he loved Stevie’s entire catalog, even the 80s shlock like Jungle Fever, loved it with the unquestioning devotion the faithful reserve for their God. Huggy Bear was a devout Stevie-ite. To him Stevie
was a wise, gifted, mystical being, most definitely from another planet and of another consciousness, part eternal child,
part social crusader, part sappy sentimentalist, an unabashed lover of God and women and all things sweet and just. When he
cruised down Freedom Ave blasting Stevie, he was taking lessons on life. He was meditating. He was praying.


Each Sunday morning Huggy Bear rose with the sun to wash, wax, buff, and pamper his cathedral on wheels. He walked to the
gas station to fill his portable can (walking ended up being faster). And then he sat and chose the day’s album, carefully
matching it with his mood, spending as much time on this as many women take to get dressed for a big night. When he found
the perfect album he laid back, way back, and placed the first finger of his right hand on the bottom of the wheel so that
his hand rested between his legs (there was something phallic about it, but he chose not to follow that line of thought).
Then he eased away from the curb and cruised into downtown Soul City and onto Freedom Ave, looking for his homeboys Mojo Johnson,
Boozoo, and Groovy Lou. They were all Stevie-ites and they all had they own little chapels. Together they would turtle down
Freedom Ave, all four rides blasting the same Stevie song at the same time.


It was essential to ride down Freedom Ave in a pack on a Soul City Sunday afternoon because on a Soul City Sunday afternoon
Freedom Ave was awash in music. Everyone in Soul City was devout, but not everyone was a Stevie-ite. At last count there were
at least twenty religions in Soul City besides Stevieism: Milesism, Marleyites, Coltranity, the Sly Stonish, the Ellingtonians,
Michael Jacksonism, Wu-Tangity, Princian, Rakimism, Mingusity, Nina Simonian, P-Funkist, James Brownism, Billie Holiday-ites,
Monkist, Hendrixity, the Jiggas, the Arethites, Satchmoian, Barry Whiters, and Gayeity. Soul City was a place where God entered
through the speakers and love was measured in decibels.


So Huggy Bear smoothed down Freedom Ave looking for his crew. He passed Hype Jackson, DJ Cucumber Slice, and Reverend Hallelujah
Jones, passed the barbershop, the rib shack, the Phat Farm, the Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles, the Baptist church,
the weave spot, the Drive-Thru Liquor Store, passed Cadillac Jackson talking to Dr. Noble Truette, chief planner and architect
of Soul City, and passed Fulcrum Negro’s Certified Authentic Negrified Artifacts, a strange little shop, more like an open
closet really, filled with his unique antiques: a pair of Bojangles dancin shoes, a guitar played by Robert Johnson, a sax
that belonged to Bird, some of Jacob Lawrence’s paint-brushes, Sugar Ray Robinson’s gloves, a Richard Pryor crack pipe, and
all sorts of things from slavery, including actual chains, whips, and mouth bits, as well as Harriet Tubman’s running shoes,
Frederick Douglass’s comb, and Nat Turner’s Bible. Purportedly, the stuff had magic residue left over by the Gods who’d handled
them, but no one ever found out because Fulcrum Negro refused to sell anything to anyone, even if they had more than ample
money.


The streets were more crowded than normal because the Soul City Summertime Fair was on. There was free food, step shows, dominoes,
spades, and a shit-talkin clown with a small pillow for a nose who walked up and dissed you, playfully but pointedly, persistently
talking about your clothes, your ears, and your momma until you buried a stiff fist right in that big old honker. Then he
laughed and thanked you and walked away. And then there were the contests everyone loved. The Neck-Rolling Contest in which
contestants were judged on how fast they could whip their head around, how wide of a circle they could make, and how many
consecutive 360s they could pull off. Contests for sexiest lip-licker, most ornate Jesus piece, best pimp stroll, who could
keep a hat on their head while cocked at the sharpest angle, and everyone’s favorite, the Nut-Grabbing Contest, a slow-motion
Negrified marathon really, wherein contestants simply hold their nuts as long as possible. The city record holder, Emperor
Jones, had stood there holding his nuts for six days, fourteen hours, and twenty-eight minutes straight. He slept standing
up, his right hand securely gripping his nuts. Incredible. Sadly, this was the first year in many that there would be no CPT
Contest because the Summertime Fair organizers had finally given in to reason: despite immense anticipation each year, the
contest never ever really got off the ground because none of the contestants ever arrived before the contest was canceled.


Huggy Bear finally found his crew hanging out in front of Peppermint Frazier, the twenty-four-hour ice-cream and hot-wing
spot, talking to a few guys from an underground Tupac cult. Mojo, Boozoo, and Groovy Lou jumped in their rides, calibrated
their stereos to today’s sermon, Songs in the Key of Life, and set their cruise control to eighteen miles an hour. Then all four of them turtled down Freedom Ave parade style, a small
cruising cumulus cloud of sound, boombapping the block with a quadruply quadraphonic Soul City Sunday afternoon blast of the
master blaster.


But at the corner of Freedom and Rhythm, as they got to “Sir Duke,” the Steviewondermobile slowed and the sound began to die.
The gang pulled to the side of Freedom and cracked the hood. Yet another battery dead. Mojo drove off to Soul City Motors
to pick up a new one. But for ten minutes the Stevie-wondermobile would be without sound. Tragedy? Huggy Bear never broke
a sweat. He was prepared. He’d had Dolemite put in an emergency backup battery that was connected only to the sound system.
He could boom the system even when the car wouldn’t start. Did he know that if the backup battery was connected to the electrical
system instead of the sound system that he could’ve kept on driving? Sure he did. But it was Huggy Bear’s world and in Huggy
Bear’s world the music could never die. So he sat in the Steviewondermobile, stuck at the corner of Freedom and Rhythm, chilling
with Groovy Lou and Boozoo to the soaring sounds of Stevie’s seamless soul stew and the world he saw with his so wonderfully
clear inner vision.


The Right Revren Daddy Love’s funeral was jam-packed from the back of the teeming creaking balconies to the very first aisle,
the family aisle, which was crowded with women half Daddy Love’s age or even a third of it, and a large, restless gaggle of
children who looked stunningly like him. Daddy Love laid resting in a pair of coffins glued together, the only way to accommodate
his massive form, as the hundreds and hundreds he’d preached to for three decades filed past him with the same shock and restless
struggling to understand that people feel at funerals for the young. Daddy Love had not been a young person for many years,
but he had made himself into a force of nature so great that people were shocked to discover that dying was something he could
do.


People flapped fans with pictures of Daddy Love on them and sang with a force that shook the foundation of the poor building,
which had only brick and mortar to protect it, and danced in the aisles, dancing to fight off tears, and sat whispering to
each other, gossiping, leaning across husbands to speak about Daddy Love and Sister Gayl and Lil Henny and Big Ange and Precious
Jones and Tish and Babs and on and on til what everyone was really saying was Girrrl, every pair of female lips in this congregation done tasted Daddy’s sweet juice.

The Deacon preached, “The Revren took from our wallets....Took from our wives.... Even took from some ah our daugh-ers!”

“Wellll.. .” they called back.

“Was he the way he was because he wanted to be or because we wanted him to be? Did the Revren take all he could get or give
everythin he had? We’ll never know.”


“Tell it.. .” they said.

“But that’s no nevermore cuz now that he gone we all gone be a lil poorer. Yes I say, we’s all a bit poorer t’day! Cuz Black
currency ain’t money. No! It’s joy! The twenty-dollar bill of our currency is theater. The dramatic theater of daily life. The ten-spot is rhythm. The fiver is hope, the deuce is freedom, and the dollar is good,
hearty laughter.”


“ Preach!!!” they yelled.


“And, of course, the C-note is love. So by our math the Revren Daddy Love was a multi millionaire. And the Right Revren Daddy Love was a big spendah!”


The Revren Daddy Love caused much discord, but none on two subjects: first, Daddy Love was colossal. Freckles on his high-yellow
skin as large as dimes, a belly as great as a jumbo TV, a mouth that made mailboxes jealous, and a frame so titanic he would
just swallow a girl up with one of his patented postservice hugs. No matter how rotund she was, Daddy Love could still hug
her in surround-sound stereo because Daddy Love was supersized, as though God had intended him to be literally larger than
life.


Second thing everyone knew about Daddy Love was that in every crevice and crack of his giant body Daddy Love did love women.
All women. Daddy Love’s love was as blind as faith and as democratic as the sun. Any woman, regardless of shape or style,
could come to Daddy Love and find herself ecstatically baptized by those eyes, eyes the color of pure honey, eyes that shot
an electric current through a girl’s body and loved her better than most men could with their hands. It was all the affirmation
a fem. . .