Title: Keepin' it real
First published: 1997
Description: 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 nineties, 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.
LC classification: PS3566.O83253 K44 1997