"It is the early autumn of 1998, and the neighborhood of East Liberty is a community in crisis. Long beset by poverty and gang violence, it is now on the brink of being cut off from the rest of the city by the opening of a new expressway. Caught in the middle of the events is the Tolbert family, whose youngest son, Chris (nicknamed Crest), has recently returned home from the hospital after a horrible accident that has claimed the use of his legs and...

Set in a decaying town in southern West Virginia, Potted Meat follows a young Aftican-American boy into adolescence as he struggles with abusive parents, poverty, alcohol addiction, and racial tensions.

"Examines the life of K'wan Taylor, a fourteen year-old boy who comes to grips with the memory of growing up in a home with an abusive father." --

"Albert Murray (1916-2013) was one of the most provocative and original American thinkers of the twentieth century, writing with equal grace and power as an essayist and novelist."--Page 4 of cover. Train whistle guitar: His schoolteacher, the barber, older girls, and a train-hopping musician teach Scooter just about all he needs to know in Gasoline Point, Alabama, during the 1920s. The spyglass tree: The growing up days of Scooter from boyhood...