Way Past Cool

by Jess Mowry

Way Past Cool was the first -- perhaps the only -- novel of urban American black life in the early 1990's: the era of collapsed structures, lost dreams, dashed hopes, agonizing violence, and a level of rage that for white America is simply unfathomable. Way Past Cool is the story of 13-year-old boys who live alone in abandoned buildings, of 16-year-old single mothers, and of lives that make kids old by the time they graduate from junior high... if live that long. This novel stars Gordon, who at the age of 13, leads his gang through the deadly streets of West Oakland, California. He carries a gun, has seen more people die than a Vietnam platoon leader, and can outswear a dozen sailors. Gordon is backed up by Lyon, a soft-spoken boy whose forays into mysticism have given him a spirituality that belies that fact that he'll blow your head off if he has to. Gordon's gang, known as The Friends, live in a state of tense coexistence with The Crew. The tenuous peace of their neighborhood is bro