100 Blocks Stories Review From Michael Eric Dyson

The following is a review of 100 Blocks Stories by Ty @tymonday Thompson #crewLove

Was finally able to read 100 Blocks Stories by @tymonday! In a word: brilliant!  These interconnecting stories offer us a powerful lense into the urban landscape, in this case Spanish Harlem, but the stories have a universal moral appeal that transcends geography and goes right to to the gut and heart.  The writing is lucid and poetic without being flowery-- descriptive without descending to overwrought expression.  Thompson is equally at home discussing drug wars and epidemics as he is in painting heartbreaking scenes of personal intimacy and suffering. You will not be disappointed in reading these searing yet sensitive accounts of what it means to grapple with the broad range of social realities that this book depicts.  I'll leave you with a couple of examples, this is from 'Preacher Man', which speaks to me for obvious reasons.  Our protagonist and narrator is offering what is essentially his last will and testament in epistolary form, a literary conceit that unites Alice Walker's "Color Purple" and Nas' "One Love" in just a few pages Thompson is able to render in vivid land and images the story of a minister whose life traces the pilgrimage of a people on the Great Migration while at the same time giving us a sense of the religious and spiritual ethos of a transplanted people. It also touches on the struggles between nonviolent civil rights leaders and their more aggressive and youthful kin. And the story celebrates the simple beauty of a black family life. And then this from his story "The Legend of the Young Killers": "Twin fog lights cut through the precipitous autumn dusk that helped to paint the ominous backdrop to an otherwise calm East Harlem Sunday evening.  The V8 engine of a 2011 Mercedes Benz CLK 550 calmly decreased from a cat - like pur to silence as the bug eyes covers extinguished the light" How's that for beautiful and poetic opening to a story that captures mayhem and chaos.  Thanks Brother Thompson for taking the craft of writing seriously. And thanks for the magnificent literary debut. I heartily recommend that you all go on Amazon.comand buy this book today! Kudos my friend. Bravo!"