“What a writer is obliged to realize at some point is that he is involved with a language which he has to change. For example, for a black writer, especially in this country, to be born into the English language is to realize that the assumptions of wich the language operates are his enemy.”
- James Baldwin, U. C. Berkeley Campus, circa 1979
Books Reviewed:
Cecelia Robinson – MEMOIRS OF A BITCH
B. Lisa – YOU KNOW BETTER
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Shantel Williams is a bitch. A ghetto-ass, slick-talking, dope-cooking, Gucci bag toting, nine-millimeter pistol carrying, cold-hearted, thug-loving, bitch. And new Chicago-bred author, Cecelia Robinson, does a marvelous job conveying that message in her magnificent debut release, Memoirs of a Bitch.
Shantel is missing and a police detective is hired by a mysterious person to locate her. After seeing her face on television, Shantel contacts the detective and agrees to meet him at a discreet location where she begins to tell the story of why she had to get out of dodge. The local diner becomes a point of rendezvous where Shantel lays bear the drama of her past life and why she went into hiding, providing the reader with a shaded window view into the tragic story of a brother and sisters remarkable journey through a tumultuous childhood of abuse, neglect, and sexual molestation. After being removed from their parents custody, and placed in foster care, Shantel and Sean-Sean decide that their undetermined destinies will only depend on their own courageous leap of faith – a leap which lands them at the doorsteps of a manipulative drug dealer named Rico. This toxic mix only yields cash, clothes, and pleasure, and eventually places the trio at a climactic boil where Shantel must decide what is true and what is not.
The plot is decent and suspenseful, and the storyline flows quite well. The book speaks to several relevant social issues - historically taboo issues in the black community. For example, child molestation – and even hints of incest – are very visible in this book (Shantel’s brother is unusually protective of his attractive sister, and hates the thought of another guy fucking her). As children, Shantel and Sean-Sean are constantly subjected to horrific verbal and sexual abuse at the hands of a brutal father. But what is also interesting is the lack of emotion and feeling in the narrator’s random stream-of-consciousness as she nonchalantly recants a daunting childhood. One can almost feel the dispassionate tone as she explains the verbal and sexual abuse at the hands of her father and uncles. This gripping recount is vivid and direct:
My daddy had me so fucked up in the head, because he kept telling me a whole bunch of bullshit, and by me being so young, I thought he really gave a fuck about me because he was my daddy, yeah right. Back then I thought that my daddy was supposed to fuck me. I thought I was supposed to suck daddy’s dick. I thought that when mama was away at work or wherever in the hell she would drift off to, because she was tired of daddy’s shit and didn’t feel like getting her ass whooped, that I was suppose to take on her role as lady of the house. Shit, that’s what daddy had told me. I remember he use to have company over when mama was away. All men. He would beat Sean-Sean’s ass for no reason at all and make him go to bed. No dinner, no shit. “Go to bed, motherfucker.”
He was so cold as winter to him. When Sean-Sean was gone, daddy would tell me to come and keep him and his friends company. My seven year old mind thought that I was special or some shit because daddy and his friends wanted me as company. Those sick ass niggas took turns playing with my Ms. Kitty. Licking on it. Sticking they fingers in and out of it. Some even put their dicks in it. It didn’t hurt though; my daddy had done all this type of shit to me before. I was use to it.
Disappointingly, Robinson does little to make the connection between the horrible childhood of rampant abuse to their later years as full-fledged criminals. And, beyond the first chapter, sexual abuse is no longer an overt issue and is all together silenced (as though erased from her consciousness….buried deep withing her mind…the mark of a molested child), thus the major motifs are drugs, cartel violence, greed, and pleasure. Ironically, it is only in the narrative (which ultimately sheds greater light on Cecelia Robinson) that we get to see – or at least imagine – the possibilities of how the childhood abuse might’ve affected Shantel and her brother. With Sean-Sean’s character Robinson takes a brilliantly suspenseful turn near the books end – and we never really see this one coming – but, because she neglects the chance to work the character into the fold of the plot, we cannot make the link between the younger Sean-Sean to the powerful scene that leaves us spell-bound and confused.
Robinson constructs her characters quite well (almost brilliantly), yet, at times the characters are situated in vague and/or contradictory contexts. Shantel is coldhearted towards women (she is a merciless bitch towards the diner waitress), but soft-hearted and vulnerable towards men (most of the men in her love-life are manipulative, deceitful, and selfish. She even has anal sex with her boyfriend, Milkbone). These ambiguities leave us startled and confused because we need to see and feel the tragic results emanating from her childhood, but we also desire redemption – which Robinson ultimately sidesteps for the safe route of closure. In that sense, while Robinson certainly does captivate our attention immediately in the opening chapter, “The Beginnings of Bullshit” (cleverly manipulating our natural voyueristic tendencies for human indecency), the book works harder to keep us peering through the filthy, stained glass in hopes of finding our own humanity.
Regardless of a few editing errors, Memoirs of a Bitch is good because, in the end, Robinson’s story is our story. And once we get past her bullshit beginnings and bitch exterior, we can then make the connection.
A must read!
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I really tried to not like this book, but with every page turn I was drawn further into the psycho-sexual labyrinth of well developed characters, a great storyline, and a wonderfully structured plot that provided purpose and meaning to the book. That stated, B. Lisa’s debut release, You Know Better, comes highly recommended, and should certainly be recommended as supplementary text for any brotha who thinks he’s got the skinny on Playa-hood.
Chance Carter is the love of Autumn Storm’s life. He’s fine, sexy, hot, and a freak in the bed. After several years of cheating, reconciliation, hurt, love, pain, lies, a secret babymomma….and great sex, Autumn decides to take a chance at real love and true happiness…with an old flame from the past. Meanwhile, Chance – now married to his babymomma – cannot let go of what he believes to be “his pussy”. But, when a woman’s fed up, there’s nothing you can do about it. Unless you’re Chance Carter. Things go from bad to worse when he realizes that Autumn is determined to move on with her life and marry the man she’s fallen in love with. And to make matters worse, Marquez – Autumn’s new beau – can fuck better than Chance: “I’ve been to ‘church’ as Chance called it but never before have I been to heaven.” But, Autumn is not shallow and her love is not superficial. She certainly appreciates good sex, but she also longs for mental stimulation, as well as a promising future of marriage, children, and eternal bliss.
Although this short novel is told from the emotional perspective of a woman, it does a fairly decent job in how it deals with male complexities, putting forth an honest attempt to grapple with man’s infinite struggle to be faithful. And we can see this in the acutely well-balanced male characters. While Chance is the typical no-good brotha displaying unconscionable behavior, unrepentant for the pain he regularly causes Autumn, yet, Devin is a stand-up guy, and Marquez is a responsible single father who makes an honest effort to atone for his past indiscretions.
Finally, B. Lisa does erotica very well. The sex scenes are well written, provocatively designed, with alluring choreography that authenticates Autumn as a bona fide freak-a-leek. I just love a woman who can suck a good dick, and Autumn’s a true head-nurse. B. Lisa really knows how to stir a delicious moment of pure hot sex. The following lengthy bedroom scene is well worth the print:
…With no words between us, Marquez and I began to undress each other while rubbing and kissing on one another. As we both stood in our birthday suits kissing and admiring each other bodies, I gently pushed Mark on his bed and kneeled down between his legs. Grabbing his dick with both hands and slowly rubbing up and down his shaft, I gave him a devilish smile as I took the KY gel off the night stand and poured a lot of it into the palm of my hand. Slowly massaging the heating oil up and down Mark’s shaft then picking up the pace until his dick was once again hard and erect, I insert it into my mouth. Marquez gasped when the head of his penis touched my lips as it entered my warm mouth. With reckless abandonment, I sucked and licked his dick as I gently massaged his balls. Mark grabbed my head and pushed his big dick deep down my throat causing me to gag. Taking back control of the pace to slow it down, I slowly ran my tongue up and down his shaft licking it like a melting ice cream cone. Sticking my tongue into his slit tasting his pre-cum must have turned him on because he held my head locking his fingers into my hair moaning and thrusting his rock hard dick deeper into my mouth. Moving his hips to the rhythm of my head movement, I sucked harder and faster running my tongue all around his cock. I stopped and held his delicious meat in my mouth. Using only the muscles in my jaws, I sucked him like Maggie Simpson sucked on her pacifier. I continued to give my man oral pleasure. Marquez moaned out loud in ecstacy calling softly my name until he was ready to cum. Grabbing my head once again, he thrust hard into my mouth as his dick went deep down my throat….Marquez came in my mouth, filling it up with his hot salty tasty cum, I greedily milked that bad boy swallowing every drop. Just like Maxwell Coffee, it was good to the last drop….
I haven’t seen that kind of professional dick-slurping since Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat. And this book is loaded with sensual erotic goodies as such but doesn’t become the focal point of the story, and the lusty sex doesn’t obscure the plot. Nor does the book rely too heavily on these amply written sex scenes to keep the reader interested in turning the pages. The sex scenes only accentuate a plotline that would surely work as well without them.
Speaking of plot, as with any good read it has become almost formulaic that a book (a least the contemporary ones) should also have glitches, bumps, and bad turns. Aside from the bad editing, this book’s plot is very smartly constructed, with realistic portrayals of love, intimacy, pain, and romance. The scenes are poignant, the dialogue is passionate, and the narrative is sweetly paced…..until the writer makes a desperately daring turn off of Nice Plot Road, swerves into the intersection of Mystery Lane and Suspense Avenue, crashing her richly detailed automobile into an obscure car at the left-bank corner of Experiment Boulevard, before plummeting into the murky swamps of Pointless Pond. Her passenger (i.e. the reader) is rushed to the Intensive Care Unit at Zora Hurston Hospital where we wait, hope, and pray that the final chapter of You Know Better will resuscitate our interest, revive our focus, and save the book. I don’t know what occured, but something happens in the book near its ending which threatens to derail the believability of the entire hook. But, you’ll just have to read the story and see for yourself.
July 3rd Book Review: I Didn’t Work This Hard Just to Get Married by Nika Beamon
