Page Publishing Author, Serving Prison Sentence, Releases Novel Set in East Oakland Group Home

Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk

Jamell Tousant has released "The Wonderful Dysfunctional World of Welfare Babiees," a novel set in a sprawling group home in East Oakland, following a cast of young characters navigating poverty, trauma, and the search for belonging. The book is published through Page Publishing.

The story centers on a household of kids known collectively through the "Sugar’s purple house" setting, among them Slimy Jay, a schemer; Pray, devoted to street preaching; Freddie, an artist working against the odds stacked against him; and Nay Nay, a streetwise trans girl. According to the announcement and other descriptions of the book, it blends humor with hardship, tracking how the characters build something resembling family out of circumstances that offer them little.

Tousant wrote the book while serving a twenty-two-year sentence in the California state prison system. The announcement states that his son was murdered in 2015, and that the loss became the turning point of a spiritual awakening that reshaped his sense of purpose. Out of that, he founded a movement called "Welfare Babiee" — an acronym, per the announcement, for "We Elevating, Living Life for Real, and Really Eating" — aimed at young people he describes as forgotten by the systems meant to serve them.

"I wrote this book for every kid growing up in forgotten neighborhoods, overlooked ghettos, and broken systems," Tousant said in the announcement. "Jesus loves you, and He will never forsake you. You can bet your last dime on that."

The publisher describes the novel as aimed particularly at teenagers and young adults looking for stories that reckon honestly with struggle rather than smoothing it over. "The Wonderful Dysfunctional World of Welfare Babiees" is available through Page Publishing’s website, as well as Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble.

What stands out to Studio CarryOnHarry is less the plot than the circumstance behind it: a novel about young people slipping through the cracks, written by someone doing so from inside one of the systems his own book is arguing against.

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