This collection of verse was inspired by stories Torrance Stephens was told by his aunt, Evelyn 'Whip" Young whom left home in Memphis at age 16 to travel and play saxophone on tour with B.B. King. Her stories of Club Paradise and the other places black musicians were allowed to perform on Old Hernando, off of Beale Street in Memphis, left a lasting impression on him. His poetry is in the tradition of Gerald Barrax and Countee Cullen. His words are gracefully furious and reflect all that a man born in the 1960s south can reflect via pen and paper - intensity and beauty.

Raw and erudite, Stephens's writing is philosophical lyricism with a sensual edge. In the tradition of Iceberg Slim, his work carries the immediacy of corner stoop storytelling but is that rare creation--African American oral tradition in a literary form. LISA RICHARDSON- LOS ANGELES TIMES Look out now Raw, hard, unglamourized country grammer describes this perspective of the world emerging from this new author. DR. KIMBERLY ELLIS, DEPAUW UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

These essays albeit temporal, are full of nerve and represent a wide range in a diversity of moods, voices, and deportments. It is nothing less than a political, otherworldly, and intensely atypical record of America's unrestrained modern age, as experienced and observed by Stephen's as historian, actor, scientist and sideline observer, that are both intimate and important to a world that continues to fester in the racial dogma and infection of identity politics that divide by skin color. His essays move from personal experience to larger connotation without disuniting the connection between...