Mambo Hips and Make Believe

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Wanda Coleman's powerful new novel chronicles the friendship between two women -- one from the black ghetto of Los Angeles, one from its white middle-class suburbs. Both are aspiring writers, both scramble to pay their bills by pickup jobs like waitressing and editing pulp magazines. For two decades they share each other's troubles and triumphs in and out of work and love. Coleman focuses primarily on the white protagonist's point of view, as the story unfolds and the character's roots are unearthed, however, we learn that there's no such thing as "pure" white -- only a mix of bloods concealed over time. As With Coleman's earlier books, Mambo Hips is alive with her patented emotional energy and lyric heat.How do good girls go wrong?Answer: It's not about the lips, it's all about the hips.It sounded simple, even childish at first. But the subtext provedmetaphor for the sexual politics of a whole generation.Hips. Loose hot heavy and swaying.The kind some crave to be smothered under.Blame it on those smoky-throated torchy red-hot mamas blisteringthe radio waves of the day, "Hey, Paisano -- learn how to Mambo!If you gonna be a square you ain'ttagonna go nowhere, " or "Com'onna my house, ta my house com' on..." or that gold-throatedJohnny Ace throwing croon, "Flamingo, when the sun meets thesea, won't you fly to my lover...." Blame the shame not on Mame, but on the Fabulous Fifties. They were born there, if not then, andthe sugar-sweet dreams of who they wer to become were seededthere.... Blame it on Chet Baker and Charles Mingus. Blame it onBobby Darin and James Brown. Most of all, blame it on those hotneon California nights when the lonely hear the palms whisper intheir blood....