The Portland Edge: Challenges and Successes in Growing Communities / Angry Black White Boy

[March 30th, 2005]

^The Portland Edge: Challenges and Successes in Growing Communities

Edited by Connie P. Ozawa (Island Press, 321 pages, $35)

Written by faculty members at Portland State University's School of Urban Studies and Planning, The Portland Edge is a part-empirical, part-analytical look at the successes that have made this one of the best-planned cities in America.

Edited by Connie P. Ozawa, the book traces Portland's pioneering growth-management policies through regionalized government and well-organized neighborhood involvement, with a particular focus on pedestrianization and mass transit. There are tables and charts comparing, for example, the ratio of home ownership in the central city versus the suburbs, and in Portland at large compared to Cleveland, Newark or San Jose. There are investigations into the role of community radio, the need for parks, aid to the homeless and protection of fish habitat.

While faculty contributors like Carl Abbott, Chet Orloff, Ethan Seltzer and Karen Gibson may have academic writing styles that wouldn't be mistaken for page-turning drama, they bring a blend of scholarly acumen and a subtly personal bond to the buildings and landscape Portland comprises.

As the metro area's 2040 Plan for smart, sprawl-less growth is threatened by setbacks like Measure 37 and ongoing school-funding crises, The Portland Edge provides a reasoned account of what the city has accomplished so far and what it will take to manage the additional half-million people expected for the Portland area in the next decade and a half. (Brian Libby)

^Angry Black White Boy

By Adam Mansbach (Three Rivers Press, 352 pages, $12.95)

Adam Mansbach will read at Powell's City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm Tuesday, April 5. Free

Macon Detornay, the antihero of Adam Mansbach's new novel, drives a taxi, freestyles and can't stand Caucasians. His knowledge of hip-hop is encyclopedic, and a tattoo of "4-29-92," the date of the Los Angeles riots, covers his left arm. Macon is also a Boston expatriate with skin as white as snow.

After Macon starts robbing businessmen on the streets of Manhattan, a manhunt grips the city. As white fares flee into the subways, NYPD frantically searches for a black cabbie. When Macon is finally nabbed and his not-so-dark secret is exposed, he becomes a media darling overnight. He uses his newfound celebrity to found the "Race Traitor Project." Its ranks quickly fill as he declares a National Day of Apology that sparks a riot and eventually catapults him into the Deep South.

Mansbach's novel longs to be a Native Son for the 21st century. Unfortunately, the author's over-the-top satire is as tired as a Mad TV sketch and his postmodern dialogue is as self-conscious as self-conscious gets. The novel reads like Black Like Me as penned by the vice president of Eminem's fan club.

Despite Mansbach's good intentions, Angry Black White Boy quickly succumbs to the weight of its grandiose ambitions. By the time Macon finds himself kidnapped in an early chapter by a gang of street performers who force him to cross-dress and read aloud from A Doll's House, the novel has already jumped the tracks, if not a sizable shark. But Mansbach's revolution will not be televised. (Brandon Hartley)