Everything's Real

This T-shirt by Leonard Benjamin of Ghettofficial Designs declares, "Everything's Real in Da Field." You can get your own for $5 at Music N Motion on East Front Street. I was there to interview a city author who recently began selling urban fiction at the store. My feature story for the Courier News may appear soon.

The story is a sequel to one in the Courier last year about author J.M. Benjamin, a former drug dealer who began writing while incarcerated. I purchased his book, "My Manz and 'Em," a story of street betrayal set in Plainfield, and now I know what beef and broccoli Timberlands are, among other fascinating facts. For example, my ex-husband's jazz colleagues in the 1950s called a car a "short," but now the street term is a "whip."

Reading "My Manz and 'Em" and "On the Road: The Original Scroll" at the same time is very interesting for the similarities in male outlaw behavior and the influence of subcultures on mainstream America. Neither book is likely to be selected by my church book club, but I am intrigued by these glimpses into past and present male worlds.

--Bernice Paglia