Although it seems an unlikely goal for a teenager pounding the pavements of one of St. Louis’ rough neighborhoods, Toriano Porter has had a burning desire to be a published author for nearly 15 years.
With his self-published work The Pride of Park Avenue, Porter chose to pay homage to his South City stomping grounds and to offer tribute to the friends and family lost on the battlegrounds of his old neighborhood.
“I’m proud to be where I’m from, and I wanted this work to serve as a written legacy of my neighborhood,” Porter said.
The book is part autobiography, part short story compilation, part novel. It presents the experiences of Porter and his peers and his professional evolution from creative writing student at Central Missouri State to working journalist for the Independence Examiner in Independence, Mo.
“The hardest part of writing a book is actually sitting down and doing it,” Porter said.
Four years ago, he buckled down and held himself captive in front of a “raggedy” laptop. He had made considerable progress n about 13 chapters n when Porter lost his entire project.
But while dusting off a box of memories from his college days in his aunt’s basement, Porter stumbled across some work from his college creative class. He decided that rather than start from scratch he would polish them off and apply these works to what evolved into The Pride of Park Avenue.
He added the life experiences of his “street thug phase” after losing his full athletic scholarship and returning to the neighborhood. He chronicles his day-to-day hustle as a freelance writer trying to get a piece of the action of the exploding local hip-hop scene. Porter contributed to stlhiphop.com, the Evening Whirl and the American after coming home to the Nelly-era St. Louis scene.
Now follows the practices of the artists he once wrote about as he works his hustle as an author. “It’s in my trunk n all day,” Porter said about the carload of copies of The Pride of Park Avenue that he keeps on hand. “I learned from the best n the hip-hoppers.”
And just as rappers use rhymes to chronicle the casualties of street life, so does Porter in his book. He takes newspaper blurbs about the untimely deaths of his loved ones and uses them as introductions to essays about them.
“Those things in the newspapers don’t allow you to get into how the person really is,” Porter said. “It’s a way of saying, ‘Your son impacted me. He is just more than a blurb in a newspaper.’”
He pays special tribute to his best friend from childhood Rory L. Watkins, who was shot and killed earlier this year.
Porter publishes a couple of stories written by Watkins and is dedicating the proceeds from book sales at one of his upcoming signings to a memorial fund for Watkins’ children.
“You couldn’t get him to sit down and write, but he was a great storyteller,” Porter said. “I wanted to surprise him with the publication of his work, but God took him on. From here on out, Rory L. Watkins will always be my feature writer.”
On the grind
Porter is coming home to promote his debut publication. On Saturday, Dec. 27 at 7 p.m., he will have a book signing that will serve as a fundraiser for the University of Central Missouri African-American Alumni Association’s Scholarship fund, hosted by UCM alum Nite Owl, at Legacy Books and Café, 5249 Delmar Blvd.
On Tuesday, Dec. 30 at 6 p.m. he will have a signing to benefit the Rory L. Watkins memorial fund at Ujamaa Maktaba Unlimited bookstore, 4267 Manchester.
For more information, or to order a copy of The Pride of Park Avenue, visit
www.mypsace.com/prideofparkavenue or www.authorhouse.com, email torianoporter@yahoo.com or call 314-565-8901.
