KEEPIN' IT REAL: POST-MTV REFLECTIONS ON RACE, SEX, AND POLITICS

"Throughout the ghettoes of America we of the hiphop generation say 'keep it real' as a way of insisting that the truth is the only way to go. In short, there is no time for sidestepping reality."
--From the Introduction

In Keepin' It Real, writer, poet, and cultural critic Kevin Powell puts both himself and society under a microscope and creates a searingly honest collection that is both powerful and disturbing. Powell's letters and reflections take us on the dizzying tight-rope walk between two worlds. From the poverty and misery of his New Jersey childhood to the excesses and successes of his mercurial rise to prominence, it is a life lived on the cutting-edge.

Within this rich weave of musings, confession, and sometimes painful introspection, Powell confronts such issues as racism, black self-hatred, gender violence in the 90s, and his own anguished revelations about sex, love, and misogyny. He also explores the meaning and myths of the Million Man March and the influential and threatening presence of rap music.

Like that musical movement created by his contemporaries, Kevin Powell samples the sights and sounds and scenarios of American life, then reshapes them into a provocative soundtrack for our times.

Kevin Powell is a former senior writer for Vibe magazine and an original cast member of MTV's The Real World. He is the author of recognize, his first volume of poetry, and coeditor (with Ras Baraka) of In the Tradition: An Anthology of Young Black Writers. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Essence. Kevin is currently at work on a childhood memoir, homeboy alone. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.