Author: Eriq La Salle, Copyright: c.2026, Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, SRP: $18.99, Page Count: 304 pages

Finally, after so much work, you’ve left your past behind.

That’s what you tell yourself: what’s done is done and you can’t undo history. It’s over. You try not to think about last month, last year, a decade back because what does it matter? As in the new novel, “Laws of Solomon” by Eriq La Salle, remembering is too full of pain.

The monsters that came to him early in his sleep were the easy ones. It was the later demons that stole Solomon Nangobi’s sleep, the spirits of all the people he killed when he was a child soldier in Uganda, and when he was a fixer in New York as an adult. Their ghosts called to him with urgent voices, though he left that life behind long ago.

Now, his days were filled working the soil in gardens near Malibu, and he loved the quiet life.

Still, he kept his guns.

And he was glad: when Solomon recognized two Zeta gunmen stalking a well-dressed man, woman, and child through the gardens, he couldn’t walk away. He stopped the gangsters with bullets, but not before the adults and their bodyguards were dead. The child, an 8-year-old boy named Gaby, was safe, but Gaby couldn’t tell Solomon what was going on.

What became quickly certain, however, was that Solomonwas now Gaby’s guardian, and the Zeta crime boss wanted them dead, too.

When he was the same age as Gaby, Solomon saw unspeakable things, the murder of his parents, the destruction of his homeland, and the atrocities that Uganda dictator Idi Amin’s soldiers committed. He learned to kill, he observed, and he was hardened, understanding as a small boy that revenge was often necessary and needed, and that blood would shed at those times.

But Gaby was pure, an innocent, a child.

Solomon reached out to his contacts to try to get the boy to safety, but being a contact of a marked man was likewise a dangerous thing: the monsters outside were worse than the ones inside him.

Two words for you: ‘Whoo weee.’ That’s what you’re going to say when you close the back cover of “Laws of Solomon,” knowing that you’ve just been taken on a wild up-and-down, around-and-round ride.

La Salle makes it impossible not to like Solomon, an African man who has, over time, lost nearly everything dear to him and who has no faith in much of anything. Readers get that part of the story eventually, and there’s historical authenticity in some of it, but we never really get to know Solomon, which makes the book feel dark and dangerous. Along the way, we meet and get to know his helpers, which buoys Solomon’s chase to find safety for the boy, and your heart won’t stop pounding.

Keep in mind that this is a thriller partially set in 1970s Uganda, so expect lots of violence but don’t expect a lot of people to live. If you’re up for that, find “Laws of Solomon.” You won’t be able to leave it behind.

By Dr. Y’Anad Burrell

“Fashion vs. Fascism” (FVF) is a visually immersive evening of fashion, music and political theater exposing the rise of fascism in the U.S. and the need to resist. Democracy is under siege, and culture is one of our most potent defenses, organizers say.

Called a live “runway revolution,” FvF premieres Oct. 3 at The Rotunda, 300 Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland.

A play that is part fashion show, part protest, part performance art, FvF stages five runway collections spotlighting the pillars of contemporary fascist politics and the urgent need to resist: the myth of a “glorious past,” the manufactured emergencies used to justify surveillance and crackdowns, and the oligarchs and grifters profiting from it all. Runway fashion shares the stage with political theater and live music, with a closing call to action.

“We need lawsuits, ballots and mass protests, but none of it lands if we’re not also fighting for people’s imagination,” says Linda Burnham, co-producer of the show. “People are exhausted and scared. FvF will expose the absurdities of fascist mythology and ideology in ways a news headline cannot and spark new ideas about how to resist.”

“Fascism doesn’t win by policy alone. It wins by telling a story. A myth about a ‘Golden Age.’ A permanent emergency that makes cruelty seem necessary. That’s not an accident, it’s a strategy, and it works on the same terrain as culture: image, spectacle, emotion,” says Aya De León, the show’s playwright.

“Every piece on this runway translates what is happening under fascism into a feeling,” explains Erica Furlong, the FVF creative director. “One designer’s trench coat is covered in pockets stamped ‘TRUTH,’ ‘MEMORY,’ ‘HOPE,’ ‘VOTE,’ ‘FUTURE,’ because that’s literally what gets seized first, pocket by pocket, under fascist decline. Fashion can hold grief and hope in the same silhouette, and that tension is exactly what this moment needs.”

At its best, fashion is about creativity, diversity, innovation, experimentation and the free exchange of ideas. Fascism, by contrast, demands conformity and control, while suppressing dissent.

FVF was created, organizers say, because democracy should always be in style.

Featured designers include Erica Varize, Rickie Lee, Tianna Charity, Julie Wong, and Maria Flores. The evening features a script by lead playwright Aya De León, musical performances by Mindeullae Project and DJ Emancipation, and other special guests.

FvF is designed to travel. Following the Oakland premiere, FvF will extend its reach through a documentary short, a curriculum on contemporary fascism in the U.S., and a full replication playbook — design templates, script, and curriculum — so organizers in other cities can stage their own version of the show.

Get more details at www.fashionvfascism.org.

“Fashion vs. Fascism” (FVF) is a visually immersive evening of fashion, music and political theater exposing the rise of fascism in the U.S. and the need to resist. Democracy is under siege, and culture is one of our most potent defenses, organizers say.

Called a live “runway revolution,” FvF premieres Oct. 3 at The Rotunda, 300 Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland.

A play that is part fashion show, part protest, part performance art, FvF stages five runway collections spotlighting the pillars of contemporary fascist politics and the urgent need to resist: the myth of a “glorious past,” the manufactured emergencies used to justify surveillance and crackdowns, and the oligarchs and grifters profiting from it all. Runway fashion shares the stage with political theater and live music, with a closing call to action.

“We need lawsuits, ballots and mass protests, but none of it lands if we’re not also fighting for people’s imagination,” says Linda Burnham, co-producer of the show. “People are exhausted and scared. FvF will expose the absurdities of fascist mythology and ideology in ways a news headline cannot and spark new ideas about how to resist.”

“Fascism doesn’t win by policy alone. It wins by telling a story. A myth about a ‘Golden Age.’ A permanent emergency that makes cruelty seem necessary. That’s not an accident, it’s a strategy, and it works on the same terrain as culture: image, spectacle, emotion,” says Aya De León, the show’s playwright.

“Every piece on this runway translates what is happening under fascism into a feeling,” explains Erica Furlong, the FVF creative director. “One designer’s trench coat is covered in pockets stamped ‘TRUTH,’ ‘MEMORY,’ ‘HOPE,’ ‘VOTE,’ ‘FUTURE,’ because that’s literally what gets seized first, pocket by pocket, under fascist decline. Fashion can hold grief and hope in the same silhouette, and that tension is exactly what this moment needs.”

At its best, fashion is about creativity, diversity, innovation, experimentation and the free exchange of ideas. Fascism, by contrast, demands conformity and control, while suppressing dissent.

FVF was created, organizers say, because democracy should always be in style.

Featured designers include Erica Varize, Rickie Lee, Tianna Charity, Julie Wong, and Maria Flores. The evening features a script by lead playwright Aya De León, musical performances by Mindeullae Project and DJ Emancipation, and other special guests.

FvF is designed to travel. Following the Oakland premiere, FvF will extend its reach through a documentary short, a curriculum on contemporary fascism in the U.S., and a full replication playbook — design templates, script, and curriculum — so organizers in other cities can stage their own version of the show.

Get more details at www.fashionvfascism.org.

By Post Staff

Mayor Barbara Lee stops by to support vendors, Winky Dinky Dogs owner Tyranny Allen

A streamlined Oakland Black-Eyed Pea Festival took place on Sat. Sept. 12 in the lower Temescal neighborhood on the blocked off street that connect Shattuck and Telegraph avenues.

An early start brought together vendor regulars from festival partner, the Freedom Farmers’ Market, and vendors who have supported the festival at its previous location at Marston Campbell Park.

Wanda Ravernell, the festival producer/director was on the verge of cancelling the festival because of funding limitations in May before reaching out to Elaine Smith, president of Farms to grow, Inc., which supervisors the market.

From its start in 2014, the festival has focused on the traditions of African American culture through music, food and art. That emphasis included fresh food vendors, particularly growers of African American legacy crops like black-eyed peas, yams, watermelon, collard greens and okra, which all originate in Africa.

To Fresno farmer Will Scott of Scott Family Farms, the Freedom Farmers’ Market allows him to bring those crops to the inner city – and support the nutrition of African Americans.

Shortly after the festival opened Saturday morning with prayers and salutes to the ancestors by Wakan Wiya Two-Spirit Drum and Awon Ohun Omnira, led M. Zamora and Otobaji Stewart respectively, 86-year-old Scott, the son of a sharecropper, announced that he will put other endeavors aside to dedicate the rest of his life to raise those foods.

Smith shared that Farms to Grow assists Black farmers in helping them overcome one of their main impediments to success – distribution – while creating alliances to help Black people maintain farmland and make it prosperous for younger generations to keep farming and farmland in the family.

As the morning progressed to afternoon, a steady stream of visitors drifted from booth to booth, chatting with vendors and each other.

Scott noted that a market day like this was what he was accustomed to in his youth, where the market was not just about buying things but also a place for valuable social exchange.

The social aspect became even pronounced shortly after midday when Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee stopped by to shop and visit with some of the vendors, including Ellen Bimpeh of Sankofa, and Ravernell who was selling T-shirts designed by Stewart.

Lee is also a fan of Winky Dinky Dogs, an eatery owned by Tyranny Allen whose second brick-and-mortar venture further anchors a hub of businesses at that corner.

As he has in previous years, Andre Thierry of Accordion Soul, closed the festival with a 90-minute set that brought young and the young-at-heart on their feet to dance in a line or as impromptu couples.

And, surprisingly, the man Allen refers to as the mayor of 45th Street, came out on cane and chair to sit by the curb in the sun and listen to music reminiscent of his Louisiana roots. His appearance seemed to echo Scott’s observance about the market: to bring people together.

The Freedom Farmers’ Market is located at 4521 Telegraph Avenue in Oakland and is open on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month until Nov. 14. For more information and to apply to be a vendor, go to https://www.farmstogrow.org/freedomfarmersmarket

By Dr. Y’Anad Burrell

“Fashion vs. Fascism” (FVF) is a visually immersive evening of fashion, music and political theater exposing the rise of fascism in the U.S. and the need to resist. Democracy is under siege, and culture is one of our most potent defenses, organizers say.

Called a live “runway revolution,” FvF premieres Oct. 3 at The Rotunda, 300 Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland.

A play that is part fashion show, part protest, part performance art, FvF stages five runway collections spotlighting the pillars of contemporary fascist politics and the urgent need to resist: the myth of a “glorious past,” the manufactured emergencies used to justify surveillance and crackdowns, and the oligarchs and grifters profiting from it all. Runway fashion shares the stage with political theater and live music, with a closing call to action.

“We need lawsuits, ballots and mass protests, but none of it lands if we’re not also fighting for people’s imagination,” says Linda Burnham, co-producer of the show. “People are exhausted and scared. FvF will expose the absurdities of fascist mythology and ideology in ways a news headline cannot and spark new ideas about how to resist.”

“Fascism doesn’t win by policy alone. It wins by telling a story. A myth about a ‘Golden Age.’ A permanent emergency that makes cruelty seem necessary. That’s not an accident, it’s a strategy, and it works on the same terrain as culture: image, spectacle, emotion,” says Aya De León, the show’s playwright.

“Every piece on this runway translates what is happening under fascism into a feeling,” explains Erica Furlong, the FVF creative director. “One designer’s trench coat is covered in pockets stamped ‘TRUTH,’ ‘MEMORY,’ ‘HOPE,’ ‘VOTE,’ ‘FUTURE,’ because that’s literally what gets seized first, pocket by pocket, under fascist decline. Fashion can hold grief and hope in the same silhouette, and that tension is exactly what this moment needs.”

At its best, fashion is about creativity, diversity, innovation, experimentation and the free exchange of ideas. Fascism, by contrast, demands conformity and control, while suppressing dissent.

FVF was created, organizers say, because democracy should always be in style.

Featured designers include Erica Varize, Rickie Lee, Tianna Charity, Julie Wong, and Maria Flores. The evening features a script by lead playwright Aya De León, musical performances by Mindeullae Project and DJ Emancipation, and other special guests.

FvF is designed to travel. Following the Oakland premiere, FvF will extend its reach through a documentary short, a curriculum on contemporary fascism in the U.S., and a full replication playbook — design templates, script, and curriculum — so organizers in other cities can stage their own version of the show.

Get more details at www.fashionvfascism.org.

Long before anyone imagined hip-hop growing old enough to have a Hall of Fame generation, MC Lyte came roaring out of Brooklyn with a voice that seemed too enormous to belong to a teenager.

It was deep, commanding, and instantly identifiable, and nothing about the young woman wielding it was tentative. By the time much of America figured out that women were not going to be supporting characters in hip-hop’s story, Lyte was already writing chapters of her own, turning “Paper Thin” and “Cha Cha Cha” into classics, becoming the first female rapper to release a full-length solo album and beginning a career that would carry her from Brooklyn to Carnegie Hall, television and movie screens, the White House and, finally, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

This fall, she is taking the long way there.

MC Lyte will spend the weeks before her November 14 induction traveling the country on her “Road to the Hall of Fame Tour,” a 12-market celebration that begins Oct. 11 in Brooklyn and is designed to put the music, memories, and stories of her nearly four-decade career in the same room with the people who helped keep them alive.

“It’s a testament to a career that I’ve worked almost four decades in now,” Lyte said after learning she had been selected for the Rock Hall’s 2026 class.

Those decades began when Lana Michele Moorer was a Brooklyn kid writing rhymes at 12, years before rap could offer anything resembling a dependable career and years before a teenage girl could look at the top of the hip-hop charts and see women staring back at her.

Lyte recorded “I Cram to Understand U (Sam)” when she was 17, telling the story of a relationship poisoned by drug addiction with a maturity that belied her age. In 1988, Lyte as a Rock made her the first female rapper to release a full-length solo album and introduced listeners beyond New York to an MC who didn’t sound interested in waiting for the men in the room to decide whether she was good enough.

“Paper Thin” erased whatever question remained.

Over a spare beat built to give the rhymes room to breathe, Lyte delivered one of hip-hop’s great dismissals of a cheating man with the composure of somebody reading him his last rites. She didn’t have to shout, exaggerate, or decorate the insult. The voice did the work.

“When you say you love me, it doesn’t matter,” she rapped. “It goes into my head as just chit-chat.”

It was funny, cold, and devastating, and Lyte was only getting started.

Eyes on This followed in 1989, bringing “Cha Cha Cha,” a record that placed her lyrical ability squarely against anyone who wanted the competition. “Poor Georgie” showed another side of her, with Lyte spinning a tragic story about a charming, reckless man over a track that borrowed from the Supremes. By 1993, “Ruffneck” had gone gold, making Lyte the first female solo rapper to earn a gold single, and the song helped make her the first solo female rapper nominated for a Grammy.

The list of firsts kept growing because women in hip-hop still had so many places they’d never been allowed to go.

Lyte became the first rap artist to perform at Carnegie Hall. In 2006, she became the first solo female rapper honored by VH1’s Hip Hop Honors. She later became the first woman to perform hip-hop at the White House, taking the music into the home of the president of the United States during Barack Obama’s administration.

By then, an industry that once treated female rappers as though there were room for only one or two at a time had been forced to reckon with generations of them.

Queen Latifah had become an entertainment powerhouse. Lauryn Hill made an album that remains part of the American musical canon. Missy Elliott built a visual and musical universe nobody else could duplicate. Lil’ Kim changed the vocabulary of female sexuality in rap. Eve carried Philadelphia onto the national stage. Nicki Minaj became one of the biggest rappers in the world, followed by another explosion of women who no longer had to explain why they were there before they could begin competing.

Lyte’s place near the beginning of that lineage is why her Rock Hall recognition carries considerably more than ceremonial value.

She didn’t invent women in hip-hop. Sha-Rock, Roxanne Shanté, the Sequence, Salt-N-Pepa, and other women were essential to the culture’s earliest years, and any history that pretends women arrived after hip-hop was established is simply wrong. Lyte helped establish how much territory a solo female MC could claim while remaining unmistakably herself.

She could make a battle record and a love record without sounding like a costume, either. She could be hard without manufacturing hardness and vulnerable without surrendering control of the song. She could share a record with men without sounding as though somebody had graciously given her 16 bars. Her voice alone made anonymity impossible.

And when rap changed, Lyte changed with it without spending the next 30 years trying to impersonate her younger self.

Audiences heard that voice far beyond rap records. It became the sound introducing some of entertainment’s biggest nights, including the BET Awards, Grammys, Emmys, and NAACP Image Awards, as well as the NFL Super Bowl Halftime Show. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, and other major companies used it in national campaigns.

Hollywood found her as well.

Lyte accumulated acting credits in S.W.A.T., Power, and Queen of the South, along with films including Girls Trip, the Sundance-winning Patti Cake$, and Justin Simien’s Bad Hair. She eventually moved behind the camera, creating, directing, writing, executive producing, and starring in Partners in Rhyme and serving as an executive producer on Netflix’s Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip-Hop.

She made her directorial debut with the short film Break Up in Love, directed music videos and television, and built Sunni Gyrl Inc. into a management and production company whose roster has included Scarface, Lil Mama, DJs, comedians, and other entertainers.

Her work outside entertainment has traveled just as far. Through the Hip Hop Sisters Foundation, Lyte has awarded more than $1 million in scholarships, according to her organization. She serves on the Kennedy Center’s Hip Hop Culture Council and co-produces its annual I AM WOMAN celebration honoring women in hip-hop.

All of it comes back together on the road this fall.

The tour has been conceived not simply as a run through the hits but as performance, storytelling, and conversation, giving Lyte room to revisit the records and the history surrounding them. For audiences who grew up with her, a song can transport them back to the first cassette, first party, or first time they heard that unmistakable contralto coming through a speaker. For listeners born after Lyte had already broken many of hip-hop’s gender barriers, the shows offer the rare opportunity to hear that history from the woman who lived it.

The itinerary itself reads like a map of an extraordinary American journey.

Brooklyn gets the opening night Oct. 11, bringing Lyte home to the borough where a 12-year-old Lana Moorer began filling pages with rhymes. Pittsburgh follows on Oct. 12 and Philadelphia on Oct. 13, with stops in New York’s Hudson Valley, Boston, St. Louis, Minneapolis and Nashville among the dates leading toward the Hall of Fame ceremony.

The tour reaches Nashville on Nov. 11. Three days later, Lyte is scheduled to be in Los Angeles for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where she will receive the Musical Influence Award as part of a class that also recognizes Queen Latifah, Celia Cruz, Fela Kuti and Gram Parsons in special categories.

Hip-hop’s presence inside the Rock Hall would have been difficult to imagine when Lyte was making Lyte as a Rock. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five did not become the Hall’s first hip-hop inductees until 2007, almost two decades after Lyte’s debut album. Since then, the institution has welcomed Run-DMC, Public Enemy, N.W.A, Tupac Shakur, Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Eminem, Missy Elliott, A Tribe Called Quest, and others.

Lyte belongs to the generation that had to imagine permanence before hip-hop possessed much evidence that permanence was possible. Rap records were still dismissed as disposable when she was making them. Female rappers faced the additional insult of being treated as though their success could only be temporary, with one woman’s arrival routinely framed as another woman’s departure.

Nearly 40 years after Lyte as a Rock, MC Lyte is still here.

The teenager who once had to prove that a woman could command hip-hop’s microphone never left it long enough for anybody to take it away.

“I’m thrilled,” she said, acknowledging that even that is an understatement.