UPTOWN

One thing you can say about Uptown, the place or the book, it's different. Different from Stevie too. Not a bad feeling flushed out, a story begun and ended, but how things look to two "little dudes" in Harlem rapping about "what are we gonna do when we grow up?" From the outside things won't look good: "I'm gonna be a junkie. . . so I can scare all the kids away cause I'm gonna be the meanest junkie of them all." From the inside it's familiar, yes, but unfocused, allusive, sophisticated. Like John faking out a hippie or Dennis on Army uniformity: "Yeah, my brother say, 'Sam gives you his own personality.'" And like their life, unresolved: "Guess we'll just hang out together for a while and just dig on everything that's going on." An authentic voice but circumscribed, without extension or illumination for the child. In the vitality, the resilience, the physical beauty — much surpassing Stevie — there's an affirmation that is also a denial of shame and ugliness and the book's validation for an adult; it doesn't coalesce (never mind the raw material) for anyone near picture book age and moreover it doesn't express the wanting they put in their poems, the truth they see in their photographs.