Wolves

Literary Nonfiction. African & African American Studies. Music. WOLVES is a mixtape of allegorical memoir, what Jeffrey Boosie Bolden called literary raps from his time chasing dreams in Gulfport, Mississippi, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is an African-American fantasy, a deeper look into the people America calls thugs. Hip hop guides the rhythms of the prose and leaves its music within the reader long after the pages have been turned.

Time and place are the rails upon which Jeffery Bolden's work runs. Non-sequential but beautifully linked through lyricism, WOLVES guides its readers steadily by a third rail of joy and pain, a latitude people and moments sprawling over the page yet held tight with an MC's mind. A mixtape of memoir, this collection of tracks speaks to and for those who have scraped through the rough margins of 21st century America, scraped through building a sense of self in new places time and time again, and scraped their way to self-realization. Hip-hop in heart, flow, and delivery, WOLVES is a great book.--Cameron Barnett

In WOLVES, Jeffrey Bolden creates an atmosphere you can touch. Track by track, this hybrid work grabs the reader like plugging into a tape deck. His characters are both golden-celebrity and everyday-grit, their voices penetrating the imagination like a sound wave. Bolden writes through music: hip-hop legends whisper throughout his lyricism. Shoulder to shoulder, they stand like giants. Yet, it is Bolden who echoes, reshaping the literary landscape. This is a book of dreams and redemption, of black love and vulnerability. Bolden interrogates the mirror of the self, of what it means to be a black man in America who dreams with his pen and ink.--Brittany Hailer