John Leland

ACROSS THE BOTTOM OF HIS ART project, Chan Yan-kwong, 19, has laced a handful of Polaroids, snapshots of bananas. The work, called "Confused Am I," is about identity on the eve of the handover.

EARL WOODS WAS TALKING about race. It was late October in Tulsa, Okla. Ralph Ellison wrote that growing up in this frontier state, boys could be just "boys, members of a wild, free outlaw tribe which transcended the category of race." But for Earl and his son, Tiger, such transcendence has not come easy. "For many blacks, Tiger is not black enough," Earl said. "There's an element in the black community that's dissatisfied with him because he won't say that he is just black.

A YOU ENTER THE BUSSEY FAMILY home in Inglewood, Calif., you can smell the gumbo, thick and pungent. Joanne, 59, comes from Louisiana, and she serves her gumbo the way God intended, with collard greens and corn bread.

FEB. 8 SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE night of Allen Iverson's life. He'd won the MVP award at the NBA's rookie all-star game. Now it was time to celebrate. While the older players were across town, partying to the veteran Isley Brothers, the NBA's hip-hop generation was settled in for a night of live rap.

IN HER BRIGHTLY DECORATED classroom at Parker Elementary School in Oakland, Calif., Cleo Shavies reads her second graders a book called "Flossie and the Fox." The student body here is 90 percent African-American, from one of the poorest areas of the city.

IN ONE OF MICHAEL JORDAN'S ANI-mated commercials for Nike, the sneaker company presented him with a cartoon check for a sum of 1 bazillion simoleons. The spot, directed by Joe Pytka, is a sly wink at corporate logrolling, the collusion not just of talents but of massive franchises: Michael Jordan Inc.

THE CEO IS IN JAIL. THE FORMER prosecutor's daughter is on the company payroll. The star rapper is dead. The staff works under the threat of both FBI probes and gang violence.

MARCHING INTO MACONBY JOHN LELAND AND VERN E. SMITHAFTER THE RHETORIC ON THE WASHINGTON MALL, THESE MEN WENT HOME AND SPOKE WITH THEIR ACTIONSADRIAN HARMON SAT AWAKE through the night last Oct. 15.

WHEN HE HEARD THE NEWS last Friday, Jerome Richards, 18, went immediately to the hospital. He'd been at work when his mother called: after nearly a week in a coma, the rapper Tupac Shakur had died of four gunshot wounds.

TO GET TO SUSIE Ades Pomerance's home in Louisville, you pass through a gateway into a community of PGA lawns and august neo-federal homes. On a malarial summer afternoon, Pomerance sat on her leather sofa, her face flushed from the golf course and the perfect makeup you find in Southern neighborhoods like this.

ON THE FIFTH FLOOR of the Ramada Plaza Hotel, the children play: about a dozen or so kids, turned loose in two rooms set aside just for them. A handful can fool around on computer games and CD-ROMs in one room while another batch does arts and crafts in the next.

Michael Irvin OF THE Dallas Cowboys has lately been known for his humility and family values. He didn't seem to have any. But flanked by his wife and two daughters last Tuesday, Irvin was the portrait of paternal contrition.

AFTER SMASHING PUMPKINS keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin died of a heroin overdose earlier this month, the group's drummer, Jimmy Chamberlin, who allegedly shot up with Melvoin, was arrested for drug possession.

IS THE PUBLIC APPETITE FOR KENNEDYANA sufficiently ravenous to devour two new tell-some books? ""Jack and Jackie: Portrait of An American Marriage,'' by Christopher Andersen, arrived in June and is already a best seller. ""All Too Human: The Love Story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy,'' by Edward Klein -- who had to change his title from ""Jack and Jackie'' -- will debut next month.

JOHNNIE HERNANDEZ AND HIS GIRLfriend, Rachelle Marie Smith, came to Dallas from Denver in 1991, a young couple with a bright future. They took a two-story brick house in Cedar Hill; he introduced her as his fiance.

IN THE FLORAL-PRINT LIVing room of Delta Delta Delta house, Lora Giovannucci and her friends were unimpressed. Giovannucci, 21, is a junior at Ohio State University.

IN THEIR FAMOUS MANIFESTO, KARL MARX AND Friedrich Engels exhorted, ""Workers of the world, unite!'' It was in just such a fighting spirit that _B_Kathie Lee Gifford_b_ mounted the podium at the Fashion Cafe in New York last Friday to protest the pesky persistence of sweatshops -- for example, the ones in Honduras and New York that manufactured her signature lines of discount clothing for Wal-Mart.

IT IS MIDMORNING IN TERRY MCMILLAN'S HOME, AND THE lovebirds are squawking. This is McMillan's modest-size house-the builders are putting the finishing touches on a grand Spanish-style manor around the comer-and the caged birds are able to rock it: four or five of them, brilliant green and red and yellow, splaying shocks of sound and color amid the fierce teal and chartreuse furnishings.

ELISE STREVEL SAYS SHE NEVER wanted a divorce. She was six weeks pregnant and happy in her marriage. But when her husband returned from a trip in 1994 and said he wanted out, she says, ""My hands were tied.

The village green in New Milford, Conn., is a snapshot of New England charm: a carefully manicured lawn flanked by scrupulously maintained colonial homes.

There are thousands of them, tireless men, women--and teenagers, too--who are quietly making a difference in communities across the country. In an age when cynicism is rampant and social problems seem permanent, those who dare to find solutions deserve recognition, because even small successes can inspire more.

The hip-hop track is flowing Daddy's House studio in Manhattan, as the man everyone calls Puffy seats himself behind the control board with a plate of soul food.

Pop trends combust spontaneously, or so the hype has it, but pop moods coalesce over time. The mood haunting this season's key albums first emerged on three unlikely hits from 1991: R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion," Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Michael Jackson's "In the Closet"-songs so tattered in their faith they treat the pop process itself as potentially corrosive.

If Madonna wants her book of erotic pictures to shock us, she's got stiff competition. With more skin in advertising, movies and on television, voyeurism is becoming the safest sex around.

The first surprise of last Friday night's massive tribute to Bob Dylan, held in New York and broadcast live on pay-per-view television, was the entrance of Stevie Wonder.

Garth Brooks just jumped into the family-values debate, right into the mess of it. "The way I remember it," he said during a free afternoon in his current national concert tour, "traditional family values was encouraging children to be the best they can be.

Denis Leary's coming in, and he's got an attitude Denis Leary can't stop talking. He can't stop pacing, can't stop smoking or shoving his face into the camera.

The snowflakes dusting Garth Brooks's Stetson on the cover of "Beyond the Season" could mean only one thing: while the rest of us sweat through August, it's Christmas in the fiscal year of the hat.

The freak show was going in earnest on the second stage: the Torture King, Matt the Tube and Mr. Lifts, who hefted concrete blocks and metal weights with chains attached to his nipples and privates.

Every rap song is a testament to the power of talk. So what better way to get into the music than to discuss it with a group of teenagers? NEWSWEEK invited 12 New York City-area students-black and white, city dwellers and suburbanites-to share their views on rap at the magazine's Manhattan headquarters.