‘My Two Uncles’ a significant primary reader

My Two Uncles, an easy reader by Jeff Rivera captures the love, acceptance and understanding a nephew and niece finds with their gay uncle and his partner. Jeff Rivera takes on the socially contentious issue of gay parenting recognizing that growing up with an openly gay uncle is an increasingly common experience. Even Honey Boo Boo lovingly refers to her uncle Lee Thompson as “Uncle Poodles.” Exquisitely illustrated it’s an uncomplicated story of the daily care and protection found in the Uncles’ love.

There is a current scientific thought that homosexual men may be predisposed to nurture their nieces and nephews as a way of helping to ensure their own genes get passed down to the next generation. Studies suggest these uncles have avuncular tendencies and are significantly more altruistic toward their nieces and nephews than straight uncles. Whatever these studies go on to document there is little question the gay Uncle can play a significant role in a child’s development and outlook.

My Two Uncles may be a significant primer in answering a beginning reader’s curiosity about the non-traditional family. Children come into the world without prejudices though understandably questions will arise. Books like My Two Uncles keep the explanations simple in clearing up the confusion and opening the mind to understanding.

I highly recommend My Two Uncles not just for the beginning readers of gay parents, uncles and aunts but all because it teaches universal notions of love, acceptance and understanding.

A review of Keith Thomas Walker’s ‘Dripping Chocolate’

Keith Thomas Walker’s Dripping Chocolate is a romantic tale with an urban twist.  The characters are not your usual upper crust lovers living fantastic lives in ideal settings coping with a complex complicated love.  The characters are true to form working class single parents making it in the world.  Nicole, a mother of three, works in a call center where her coworker girlfriends make up her supportive social circle.  Charles Dwayne Hester is only months out of the joint taking on the challenges of an ex-con seeking employment while resisting the street’s lucrative drug hustle.  Determined to go “legit” Charles is forced to rely on his money making assets, a handsome face and a well endowed muscular body.  Charles is reluctantly drawn into stripping because of his desire to be a good father and the responsibility of two kids and twice the baby mama drama.

The story opens with Nicole—not without her own baby daddy drama–coming to the realization that her recent relationship with Byron isn’t working.  He’s controlling and jealous and as advised by her girlfriends potentially dangerous.  She breaks it off but Byron can’t seem to take go for an answer.  To celebrate her 29^th birthday girlfriends treat Nicole to a night out at Peeping Jane, a male strip club.  Nicole shuns the idea of male strippers.  Exciting and easy on the eyes she considers them undesirable and full of no class baggage.

Enters Dripping Chocolate his first night on the job stripping; learning the ropes and making plenty of money.  Nicole gets a special dance and the encounter remains engrained in her memory.  Shortly thereafter she bumps into Dripping Chocolate aka Charles at the Walmart while both are shopping for their respective sons.  Her new perception of Dripping Chocolate as a responsible father dramatically changes Nicole’s first impression.

With cold feet she resists his overtures while considering her girlfriends’ conflicting advice.  Nevertheless she dives into irresistible waters, but soon finds swimming in the budding romance a challenge.  The plot thickens with heightened conflict when Charles’ stripping becomes the elephant in room.

Conflict is the key to Keith Thomas Walker’s string of successful novels.  The author is a master of what literary agent Donald Maass calls micro-tension, the literary device designed to keep readers turning pages.  While Dripping Chocolate is a romance it’s no fantasy dream but chocked with common real life urban struggles.  Through sublime dialogue Walker’s characters jump off the page vivid and real.   In great writing the plot is layered with conflicting relationships taken to dramatic heights.  I highly recommend Dripping Chocolate.

You can listen to my in depth interview with the author on my blog EditorialIndependence.com.

Poet and hip hop artist MV hits his mark

Michael Victor Whatley, Jr., also known as MV, a rising poet, hip hop artist and playwright, was recently on the streets selling advanced copies of his self- published book of poetry Trying To Be Grown and caught the attention of Washington Post reporter Peter Hermann.  Profiled as a curios oddity, an “out of the ghetto” success story, the Post headline touted Former D.C. rec-league star turns to poetry to escape urban neighborhood and crime.  It is debatable whether MV’s biography represents an escape, moreover it’s a narrative illustrating a young man rising above environment discovering his talent and building upon it with self-reliance and discipline.

A DC native MV is a Speech and Theater major entering his senior year at Tennessee State University in Nashville.  He is one of many fortunate young men who thrive despite the adversity and crippling influences associated with growing up in the inner city.  Like most young men MV was drawn to sports hanging out at the Rosedale rec where he earned a reputation as an accomplished athlete.  At the same he was developing another interest in the written word.  He credits football with distracting him from being sucked into the street life and the neighborhood drug trade. Thanks to his aunt, grandmother and vigilant parental guidance that other interest ultimately held sway over his life and future.

At age 21 MV stands 5’7’, 125 pounds with a slight build, a brilliant smile, inquisitive eyes, and a gregarious and engaging personality all of which makes him more suitable for the stage than grid iron.  While his brief biography may be of interest it is his growing body of compelling work that deserves more scrutiny.  It reveals the essence of MV going about the business of an artist mastering his craft.  He speaks of the influences of Mos Def who rose from hip hop to stage and screen and a particular affinity for the most notable and influential rapper Nas.  MV’s book of poems Trying to Be Grown captures the experience of the young urban black male coming of age and undergoing the sometimes perilous transformation into manhood.  He speaks of loneliness, love and lust while trying to find his place in the world.  His poetic voice is tender and vulnerable at times introverted and deeply personal alternating to the outspoken and combative critical of the world around him.

Like poetry his music captures in form and feeling the hip hop genre’s elements of story-telling, subject matter, creativity, word play, metaphors, and delivery.  At this stage in his development–a raw talent undergoing maturation he’s moving towards mastering the art form.  While his work is sometimes punctuated with the raw underground qualities of the profane and the sexually explicit he is evolving toward a more artistic and sublime sound.  That evolution is evidenced on his Youtube channel mikemvw21.  Rhythmic hypnotic sounds abound on his new mixed tape titled Vol. 7.  Pride scheduled to drop September 7^th at Datpiff.com.  Already a number of singles are generating buzz including Desperately Waiting,  On my job, and Makes a song.  Trying to Be Grown is also scheduled to become available on Amazon September 7th.  MV has already attracted the attention of some major recording labels and hopes to break out in the near feature.  Meanwhile his play The Good Die Young expects will be staged by a university troupe this academic year.

With entrepreneurial hustle MV is following in the foot steps and tradition of great Black poets like the young playwright and poet Langston Hughes who made his mark self-publishing and self peddling his works as well.  MV is enthusiastically taking on the challenge of marketing and building a platform necessary for today’s digital market.

MV returned to his old neighborhood this summer greeted like a hometown celebrity by proud friends and family.  And to hear him talk, his native Rosedale and DC are forever with him–having never escaped, but away only a sabbatical.

Romance Slam Jam Author Interviews Part 2

Author interviews with Marilyn Tyner, Denise Jeffries, Keith Thomas Walker, Koko Brown, Farrah Rochon, Rhonda McKnight, Sean Russell, Alice Wootson

Romance Slam Jam Author Interviews Part I

Beverly Jenkins, Chanta Rand, Deborah Fletcher Mello, Evelyn Palfrey, Iris Bolling, Laura Parker Castoro, Wayne Jordan, Pamela Samuels Young

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