Hood Lit 101.
We have all seen them.
“Around the Way Girl 2.”
“Homo Thug.”
“Let That Be the Reason”.
Its Hood Lit. Urban Fiction. Hip Hop Fiction.
You see folks reading them on the train. Ladies takin’ they slow @ss time going up the stairs at 14th street because they are engrossed in chapter 5.
I have seen teenage girls, sharing a SINGLE book between the two of them, one flap on each of their laps, on the train ride to school.
Mean Sexy says people love ’em because of the marketing.
Which is partially true.
The cover images certainly do provoke a reaction.
I think it that it is the marketing and the accesibility of the language.
Kids like racy, sexual, street based fiction.
On top of that, kids have allways wanted to read and do sh*t that there parents did not approve of.
Urban fiction is racy and allows for teens to be quasi defiant.
When it comes to Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Be True to the Game, I don’t think we have to choose.
There is room for Urban Fiction and the Black Cannon. For Nikki Turner and Walter Dean Myers.
A View From Inside the Publishing Industry
The hood writers and the black cannon need to come together to see what they can learn from one another.
Malaika Adero, and editor at Atria says that the canon needs to up their grizzle,
But literary writers often invest less of their time and resources in learning how to promote their work, expand on and respond to the desires of their prospective readers, and associate themselves with all kinds of other writers and artists?not just the ones who teach at the right universities and have the enviable contracts with major houses.
Commercial writers model for the artsy set new ways to cultivate and expand their audience, and fashion themselves into better business people.
She says that the urban writers need to get them writing workshops going,
On the other hand, so many of the commercially successful authors?once self- or small-published?are amateur writers, albeit with great storytelling and entrepreneurial instincts, and tremendous drive. They could learn from the example of their colleagues who study with and expose themselves to the criticism of their peers and academics; who discipline and challenge themselves to be more creative, rigorous and ambitious in the practice of their craft.
How I Feel About Hood Lit
As for my own personal taste.
I can’t get into most of them. And trust me I try. Not because the stories are bad. The writing bother’s me.
Most of the folks writing the books have great imaginations and can weave a good story.
But the language is like walking barefoot on broken glass, in Howard Beach at night, in the middle of July. All bad.
Many of the writers need a writing workshop. Period. Point. Stop.
Peep what Nick Chiles had to say,
That leaves me wondering where we – writers, publishers, readers, the black community – go from here. Is street fiction some passing fad, or does it represent our future? It’s depressing that this noble profession, one that I aspired to as a child from the moment I first cracked open James Baldwin and Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez about 30 years ago, has been reduced by the greed of the publishing industry and the ways of the American marketplace to a tasteless collection of pornography.
Earth to NICK. The same thing that happened in Hip Hop is happening in literature. Why?
Because Random house, Simon and Schuster, like Universal and Island Def Jam are obligated to please their SHAREHOLDERS not Black Readers.
Hate the game, hate the game.
Reading is Fundamental Fam
However, it is important to note that Black people are reading these books by the truck loads because they find them appealing.
I ain’t mad at that.
Reading is reading is reading.
I hope that the books play a role in inspiring an entire generation of readers and writers of all genres.
Authors are Getting Money
In researching this article I came across this.
While she allready a publish writer, she freaked a pseudonym, to get that urban lit cash.
Muy interesante.
I remember seeing that book cover earlier last year and thinking that I liked it.
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Jeff, I know you don’t want to hear it, but our Beloved Cody’s books on Telegraph
could have stayed open had it done two things:
a. Expanded its offerings on childrens books.
b. Offered more Hood books.
These two areas are explosive.
Think “Harry Potter”. Think “Lord of the Rings. Think, “True to the Game”. Think. “Diary of a Diva”.
Kids would have been up in that piece.
Yes. They may have needed to hire a security guard, to keep the ruckus down,
but that is just the cost of doing business.
Just like the blaxpoitation era in the 70’s saved Hollywood from bankruptcy, urban books are providing some well needed revenue to the publishing world.
White Folks Writin’ Urban Lit
Even the majority is getting some of that Urban lit Cash.
Peep.
I was on this site, looking for an image of one more book to add to this post. When I came across her.
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Her profile qualifies as the racist item of the day.
Biography
- Allison van Diepen is a high school teacher who is often mistaken for a student. She spent three and a half years teaching at one of Brooklyn’s most dangerous public high schools.This is her first novel.
Its mad racist sh*t up in those three sentences.
a. Allison van Diepen is a high school teacher who is often mistaken for a student.
i. Read- she is young, impressionable and vulnerable in her Brooklyn Jungle of a high school.
b.She spent three and a half years teaching at one of Brooklyn’s most dangerous public high schools.
i. Perpetuating hella stereotypes. Brookyln = Automatically Dangerous, right.
ii. Translation. She has spent 3.5 years observing niggerdom upclose and personal which qualifies her to write a book for teenagers about a teenage drug dealer. Excellent.
ii. Which I presume lends credibility to her novel. That statement is careless, irresonsible and self-serving.
iii. Even if the statment is true, the purpose of it being there is to give her credibility that she innately does not have.
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Dang. That was a long post. Where erry body @?
*Miss Ahmad. I think you in Hawaii on vacay!?!?!
* J!?!!?!?!!? You moved back and lost yo innanet service?
* Vik. Well vik, you post more than me, so you stay busy.
* Ms. TPW. I got a hunch you in NYC right now.
*sticks out tongue. Runs out room*
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