Free Burning

by Bayo Ojikutu

Book Overview

Tommie Simms was supposed to be the community hope, the young man from the neighborhood who made good. He attended a state university, married a respectable woman, and landed a position at a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400082897
• ISBN13: 9781400082896
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA)
• Length: 383 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Brace yourself.

In his second novel (his first was 47th Street Black Boy), Bayo Ojikutu explores one man's struggle to survive by dancing on the thin ice of the two worlds he inhabits. On one hand he is young black father and husband trying to survive amid the temptations of thugs and drugs on Chicago's south side, and on the other, he's a black college graduate trying to make it in a white man's world. You will struggle along with Tommie Simms and he interacts sweetly with his wife and child, and you will brace yourself, as well, against the fear, hopelessness, and injustice that await him around every street-lit corner.

New Exploration of Staid Reality

This is provocatively written fiction, and an intermittently interesting read. Reviews chronicled by Kirkus, Black Issues Monthly Book Review, Essence, the Miami Herald, and the critique written by Donna Seaman of Booklist seem to hit the work's merit in most apt fashion. BURNING is strong urban literature, a welcome reprieve from common guttural, oblivious and nonsensical takes on contemporary "Black life" -- but it surely is not a read well-suited to those seeking easy "alleluias", "amens" and "yes ma'ams".