The Pusherman

Self-publishing Jamaican-born author Andre Porter pounds the pavement.

by Zach Mortice

"New York City has, what, like 19.3 million people, and a large Caribbean community," ponders the Jamaican-born author. "If we did a book tour in New York, and if we sold a book to one in every 50 Caribbeans, that's 100,000 copies at $10 a book. That's a flat million dollars right there" — which certainly wouldn't all be his if he used a mainstream publisher.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN: When he's not writing, Andre Porter's selling his novels on the street. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Porter's energetic smile and effusive enthusiasm don't peg him as a hard-boiled crime writer either, but his approach to retail book sales does have a lot more in common with his character's criminal antics in The Rise and Fall of a Jamaican Don. Unlike most self-published authors who churn out a few hundred vanity copies to hand out to friends and roommates from their college lit days, Porter pushes his product. You might see the self-professed "commercial thug" wandering subway stops handing out fliers. You might see him shilling along South Street, or in restaurants all over town telling people about his book, which he interrupted this interview to do. You might even see him in Canada, England or Haiti, setting up a booth at a Caribbean festival.

"I don't have a million-dollar company to sponsor me, so I'm bringing my book to you," he says.

Those million dollars might be closer than they appear. Porter claims he's already sold more than 12,000 copies of Jamaican Don, which has allowed him to ditch his full-time gigs (both of them) and focus on writing. The tranquility of a writer's life hasn't cooled off Porter's subject matter. He's currently working on a Jamaican Don screenplay and is negotiating with Damon Dash's film production company. His newest book, Tears from My Pen (which he started promoting weeks before it was even finished), takes the over-the-top violence and street nihilism of Jamaican Don and replaces it with lurid sex tales and social taboos. It's a triple-X melodrama with enough explicit sex and dirty talk to keep it off HBO, should it ever be made into a movie. In its sketch of a plot, a young, professionally successful biracial man finds out his wife, a poor Caribbean immigrant he met while on vacation, has been impregnated by another man with AIDS.

Porter got idea from one of those "Who's the baby daddy?" episodes of Maury, and a personal experience. A friend of Porter's had just found out that his wife had had a long-term affair with another man and that the resulting child was now 5 years old.

"That man just gave me a best-seller," Porter remembers thinking. "He was ready to put a bullet in his head."

It's a step away from the regionalism Porter explored in Jamaican Don, but he hopes this book will make inroads towards literary recognition of Caribbean authors.

"Name me a Caribbean author!" Porter challenges. "You can't do it! Every culture loves reggae music. Every culture loves our food. We do have authors and stories to tell. I want to cover my territory as a Caribbean author."

From birth, this territory was the aptly named Shooter's Hill neighborhood in Kingston, Jamaica. There, he heard stories of crime-fueled brutality and grisly retribution that made their way into the 99-page Scarface-meets-The Harder They Come-meets-Saw breathless dash of a manuscript that is Jamaican Don. It's the story of a group of Jamaican immigrants in New York City who progress from pot-dealing punks to underworld kings of the East Coast via trunk loads of mangled bodies, and it culminates in a multinational mafia showdown on the streets of Philadelphia. Like Tears, Jamaican Don isn't subtle about anything. Plot development and dialogue are sparse, but it's as addictive as junk food.

Porter left Jamaica to finish law school at Rutgers-Camden, but when his financial aid dried up, he was left working clerical jobs to pay the bills. A friend challenged him to write a book instead. So he did.

With scholarly resolve, Porter researched the history and habits of the organized crime groups he writes about: Italians, Russians and Jamaicans and this commitment to the hidden tales and subcultures of his heritage will be tested with his next project.

The Mirror and the Reflection was going to be a nonfiction exposé on a cult of Jamaican Revivalists who seek immortality through old African slave rituals. Porter says this group uses witchcraft and voodoo to further its goals, and counts the elite of New York City society among its members, including a U.S. Congressman and a famous sitcom actress. He also maintains he's no outsider; Porter grew up with these traditions. He believes in them. And fears them. When his usual whirlwind of self-promotion got too many people talking about the book, he says the Revivalists told him to scrap the project, and he complied.

Porter is now fictionalizing the story, and working on two children's books and a sequel to Jamaican Don. With so many products to promote, only a book deal can keep him off the streets.