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From the wildly popular author of the groundbreaking debut The Portable Promised Land comes an inventive and hilarious first novel about an African-American utopia threatened by the darker side of human nature.
Welcome to Soul City, where roses bloom in the cracks of the sidewalk along Cornbread Boulevard, musical genres become political platforms, and children use their allowance money to buy records from the Vinyl Man. Its an unusually peaceful and magical American community with a strong heritage and sense of unity--at least, thats how journalist Cadillac Jackson first finds it.
When Jackson visits Soul City on a magazine assignment, a mayoral election is imminent and candidates from opposing parties are battling to control the citys soundtrack. Amidst the increasingly hostile campaign, Cadillac falls for Mahogany Sunflower, a beautiful Soul Cityzen, and begins a struggle to shed the embattled African-American identity hes been taught to adopt, in order to exist in a community where the content of his character really does determine a black mans identity. What he discovers reveals as much about himself as it does about human nature and the meaning of race in America.
- Sales Rank: #1514561 in Books
- Published on: 2004-09-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .75" w x 5.88" l, .68 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 192 pages
From Publishers Weekly
In a swamp of political mudslinging tomes, this charming and quirky fairy tale for grownups comes as a restful change. Stem-cell clashes? Foreign policy? Forget it. The mayoral race in Soul City hinges on one issue and one issue only: which candidate will make the best DJ, pumping the hippest music into the speakers that hang from every lamppost in the city. The citizens of this grooving utopia, which boasts "more mojo than any city in the world," are entirely separated from the rest of America, and they like it that way; it leaves them free to devour Granmama's biscuits by the bushel, drive around in cars that play only the driver's favorite singer, and attend St. Pimp's House of Baptist Rapture. When Cadillac Jackson, a journalist from Chocolate City magazine, arrives to write an article about the election, he promptly falls in love with the seductive Mahogany Sunflower, but even more so with the city itself—the only place left in America where black really is beautiful. Imaginative, buoyant and slyly funny, this satire by magazine writer Touré (The Portable Promised Land) is a delight to read and a pleasure to hum along to.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Soul City is a place of uncertain geography founded by escaped slaves who could fly, a miraculous place where flowers grow out of the concrete, music is revered, and ailments are healed by doting grandmothers rather than doctors. According to Soul City legend, the escaped slaves blessed the citizens to live lives confined only by the boundaries of their dreams. Cadillac Jackson, an outsider and a writer trying to capture the essence of the community, falls in love with Mahogany Sunshine, the DJ in the Biscuit Shop and a direct descendant of the flying black folks. He struggles to reconcile what he sees and experiences with black culture lived in the "real" world, while the citizens of Soul City are in the midst of a pivotal mayoral election that will determine the sound track of their lives and the direction of their heritage. Toure, author of the short story collection The Portable Promised Land (2002), offers an imaginative allegory on black culture filled with magic realism and biting social commentary. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"SOUL CITY is an exhilarating allegorical tale that satirizes racial stereotypes through hyperbole." -- Harriet Klausner, Blether Book
"Touré . . . offers an imaginative allegory on black culture filled with magic realism and biting social commentary." -- Booklist
"Touré renders a series of fables that magnify a way of life . . . that others seek to emulate, but never capture." -- —Curled Up With a Good Book
Touré draws on his awareness of today's popular culture amusingly and smartly as very few writers have." -- Clarence V. Reynolds, Black Issues Book Review
Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
My Soul Looks Back in Wonder..
By Jeffrey B. Livingston
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.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Review by Ruth Williams... Rate = 3.5
By Ruth Williams
Soul City by Toure is an undercover social critique, which cleverly uses the technique of magical surrealism. At first glance, it may seem like a story for children but it is quickly established that one can better appreciate and enjoy Toure's style by not only having insight but also having knowledge of greater works of literature. Much of Toure's inspirations can be traced back to "great books", such as Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison or Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. The language is captivating, the descriptions so outrageous that you'll find yourself laughing out loud at the thought of Unicorn's three foot [...] or Granmama's no-nonsense attitude.
The book opens with the character of Cadillac, a writer from the "big city" who wants to be the one to capture and reveal the true essence of this seemingly utopian town of black people. In this city which is ruled not by typical politics but by whoever has the best music and partying style, everything deemed impossible in the "real world" becomes exaggeratedly normal, such as people flying, biscuits conveying feelings and flowers growing through concrete. And that's only the beginning! The story branches into a multitude of shorter parable-like stories, which are told as a part of the town's history. Each part of the history expresses the complexities of a black person's world while also highlighting the strength and ingenuity possessed by black people. However, it also touches on how society exploits black people, who in turn, exploit themselves, as is the case of John Jiggaboo.
It is an enjoyable read, although perhaps due to the use of magical surrealism, the problems in the book, such as the town being taken over by Jiggaboo's derogatory shampoo and then the devil, are solved so easily and so impossibly that it may frustrate the reader. Toure doesn't hesitate to critique almost every aspect of life, from religion to sex to food. Simultaneously, he manages to praise the black culture, making it easy for any reader to find something, whether good or bad, to identify with. He successfully entwines both the "ugly and beautiful" of the black community in his story. Perhaps the only complaint is that his main character of Cadillac, who seems to serve the purpose of tying all the stories together, does not receive any real development. Although the ending is relatively "happy", the reader is still left with a puzzling feeling of slight confusion, which either will spur further introspection into the deeper issues of the book and society or which will compel the reader to throw the book across the room in irritation, deeming it an incredibly childish waste of time.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Soul City
By Dana
Touré's vivid imagination and brilliant writing make the novel Soul City come alive. His story is the story of Cadillac, a journalist from the city sent into Soul City to try to write a piece that captures the essence of the place. When he gets there, he is immediately captivated by the beautiful people and the bizarre way of life. There are people who can fly, people who never die, and a mayor chosen by how well he can DJ the music that plays on 24/7.
However, the main conflict occurs when the city has to pick a new mayor. The new mayor is incompetent and allows corruption into the city. Pretty soon, the city that was so black and beautiful becomes a place of self hatred, sex, and drugs.
The conflict is resolved, however, and Soul City goes back to being beautiful again. Cadillac realizes, though, that there is always ugly mixed in with the beautiful, and that is how he captures the essence of Soul City.
Touré's writing, while beautiful and visual, should be kept to short stories. His previous collection of short stories called "The Portable Promised Land" was excellent because it was a bunch of separate stories. Soul City is a novel only because it is loosely all tied together by the story of Cadillac. All of the other characters have their own stories, like the story of Ubiquity Jones, the woman who knows everyone's business, or the story of Precious, an woman addicted to a drug that has to be dropped in the ear, and overuse causes the shriveling of the ear, or the story of Unicorn Johnson, the man with the world's biggest penis. All of these individual stories truly captivate the reader. However, when the novel returns to Cadillac, that attention wavers, and the main reason the reader keeps reading is in anticipation of the next interesting character and his/her story.
If one is in the mood for an interesting read, however, do not hesitate to pick up Soul City. It definitely makes one think, and had many references to greater works of literature, especially Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
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