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Way Past Cool was the first -- perhaps the only -- novel of urban American black life in the early 1990's: the era of collapsed structures, lost dreams, dashed hopes, agonizing violence, and a level of rage that for white America is simply unfathomable.
Way Past Cool is the story of 13-year-old boys who live alone in abandoned buildings, of 16-year-old single mothers, and of lives that make kids old by the time they graduate from junior high... if live that long.
This novel stars Gordon, who at the age of 13, leads his gang through the deadly streets of West Oakland, California. He carries a gun, has seen more people die than a Vietnam platoon leader, and can outswear a dozen sailors. Gordon is backed up by Lyon, a soft-spoken boy whose forays into mysticism have given him a spirituality that belies that fact that he'll blow your head off if he has to. Gordon's gang, known as The Friends, live in a state of tense coexistence with The Crew. The tenuous peace of their neighborhood is broken by Deek, a drug and gun dealer whose bodyguard, Ty, is trying to protect his own little brother from the street life. Deek is trying to sell guns to each gang in the hopes of escalating their turf rivalry into real war... for his benefit. On the sidelines sit the police. The ones who aren't actually on the take are happy to let the kids kill each other off.
Throughout this story of despair, violence, and hopelessness, runs a thread of human feeling and power that prevails even over the awful conditions of the characters' lives. The connection between the members of the gang is one of survival, and of real people trying to meet emotional needs. These young boys are violent, vulgar, and perceived by most of society as a lost cause, yet there is something uniquely human about them. In a way that many "kinder and gentler" people will never understand, they love each other, and in each other they find hope.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
black kids, black teens, Fiction, Gangs, African Americans, Fiction, general, California, fictionPlaces
Oakland (Calif.), Oakland, CaliforniaTimes
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Way past cool: a novel
1993, HarperPerennial, Perennial
in English
- 1st HarperPerennial ed.
0060975458 9780060975456
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Book Details
First Sentence
"“Gordon! GUN!" screamed Curtis, diving off his skateboard onto trash-covered concrete."
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- Created January 26, 2017
- 15 revisions
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July 24, 2024 | Edited by Jess Mowry | Updated cover, added first sentence |
July 24, 2024 | Edited by Jess Mowry | Update covers |
July 24, 2024 | Edited by Jess Mowry | //covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/14649165-S.jpg |
April 16, 2024 | Edited by Jess Mowry | Updated cover |
January 26, 2017 | Created by Jess Mowry | Added new book. |