Riot Inside Me

Satire and journalism are alive and well in L.A., at least when Wanda Coleman is doing the biting and the reporting.Publishers Weekly The Riot Inside Me once again finds the author at the crossroads where art and politics, the personal and the political, and L.A. and the larger world meet. The 26 pieces gathered herea hopscotch of essays, memoirs, interviews, and reportsinclude a haunting memoir of her first husband, a moth drawn to the flames of the more extreme forms of 60s radicalism, and Colemans now famous bad review of Maya Angelous Song Flung Up to Heaventhe most controversial piece Ive yet written and a caustically funny report on its fallout. Of this nonfiction collection, the Los Angeles Times said: Coleman is best known for her warrior voice. But her voice too can weep elegiac, summoning memories of childhoods neighborhoods her South L.A.s wild-frond palms, the smog-smear of pre-ecology consciousness. Her voice hits notes as desperate as Billie Holidays tours of sorrows more desolate stretches. But it can also land a wily punch line as solid as that of a stand-up comic.