Yet this mystery, while involving, provides a backdrop for a deeper, and more painful, examination of the roots of contemporary urban crises and the ambivalent relationship between black elected officials and the urban poor. Isaiah Bishop, well aware of the stark realities and unfulfilled promises of black life in urban America, is forced to confront these issues head on is his search for Billy King. Bishop is driven by more then the simple wish to help his former student however. Isaiah Bishop is haunted by images of war that he has encountered at home and abroad. While these domestic battles are punctuated by reading the major works of black poets and writers including Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Claude McKay, a state of siege envelops the lives of those in the community.
Political movements have casualties that are often left undocumented.
Nowhere is this more evident then in the description of Juanita King's late husband, Sonny. Juanita King spends the rest of her life attempting to protect and insulate her son from the horrors of a black urban community under assault by corrupt politicians, a sadistic police force, under-education, and poverty. In many ways Bishop's search for King, and the dual narrative structure that traces the demise of the promise of liberation that had been trumpeted during the Black Power era, represent a reclamation project. This project, like Simanga's narrative, is multifaceted. On this score Catrell Merit, the enigmatic and brilliant leader of the drug-dealing Egyptian Cobra gang challenges facile recriminations deployed against black youth involved in illegal activity.