THE COLORED GREEN TREE

THE COLORED GREEN TREE by Larry Delano Coleman (Amazon.com/ Kindle (c) 2011) This novellette, by retired Kansas City attorney and A.M.E. Pastor, Larry Delano Coleman, examines an all-too-familiar sight in black America, “sagging pants.” So, too, were collard greens at one time an all-too-familiar sight and smell in black America! He uses collard greens, which he puns as “colored greens,” that most nutritiously potent of vegetables, as the basis of an extended analogy in his short, but powerful ,7500-word, easily-read, first novellette. The 24-page book analogizes the evolution of “saggin',” that defiant/nihilistic fashion statement, and those who “sag,” to collard greens, that have yellowed, and now 'sag.' This vegetable's sagging creates a crisis in the green grocers industry, in the black community, and among the genomes of the collard greens themselves. They all separately convene in search for a cause and for a cure for 'sagging.' Gene transfers from the humans that harvest and grow the greens to the young greens themselves, due to the mystery of epigenetics, is suspected as the cause. Happily, a cure is found for sagging, and a remedy for the dietary/nutritional/cultural/spiritual deficiences that caused it! Along the way, a short genetic and cultural history of collard greens is given. Current cultural commentary, some of it unfavorable, is made by Tiger Woods and Fuzzy Zeller controversy, NBC television's black history month hullaballou, and by dietary snobs of all races. More favorably for this maligned vegetable, however, an Annual Collard Greens Festival that is held each year in North Carolina is highlighted. Likewise, the State of South Carolina, where collard greens are the official state vegetable, is lifted up. Southern blacks and whites still enjoy this nutritious food. Epigenetics, the study of the environmental impacts on intergenerational genetic transfers, has been validated earlier this year by geneticists and molecular biologists. That boosts this book's cogency. #30