The genre's growth has been felt at the street-side tables, too. "Right now, the industry is so flooded," says Darren Coleman, the D.C. writer who now has a four-book contract with Amistad. "And the best indication is if you go out and look at the tables of the vendors. The turnover is so quick. If your book doesn't become a classic, you're off that table; in 60 days, you're old news. There used to be a time when your book would sell strong for a year."
Coleman, who sold more than 30,000 copies of his first self-published book by working through mom-and-pop vendors and small East Coast chains, also runs a publishing house called NVision. His strong sales have come from an ability to pick and write stories that resonate with his readers, a group that he says includes an increasing number of men.
"Traditionally, people think that men don't read, or black men don't read a lot of fiction," Coleman says. "But I'm getting so many responses from men who say: 'You know, I haven't read a book since junior high school, but yours was the first book I picked up and was able to get all the way through.' I have a large readership in the prisons. I have a large readership of young people, college people. But I would still venture to say 80 percent of the people are women, the core readers."
Coleman's brand of gritty, street-ready writing has roots that go back for decades. Chester Himes polarized and captivated readers in the 1950s and '60s with his edgy black detective novels featuring Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones and his earlier, more strident works such as "A Case of Rape." In the late '60s and early '70s, writers such as Donald Goines ("Dopefiend" and the "Kenyatta" series) and Robert "Iceberg Slim" Beck ("Pimp: The Story of My Life") paralleled the rise of blacksploitation cinema, and laid the seeds of the current street fiction boom.
"I just remember sneaking those books under the kitchen table and reading them, because my older brothers and sisters were reading them," says Amistad's Rockelle Henderson. "I think you're having sort of a rebirth of that sort of thing -- it's the story from the streets, and the people who are buying it, they're living this. So they're starting to see themselves in books, and that's what's been missing for a long time."
"A lot of it has to do with drugs," Henderson adds. "It's the real stories. They're not glorifying the streets, it's just what it is."
Sister Souljah's "The Coldest Winter Ever" is often cited alongside Woods' "True to the Game" as the beginning of this most recent revival of the genre. Both authors have used street stories and racial tension to stoke book sales, selling to a population traumatized by gang violence and the brutal criminal justice system. For much of Woods' audience, the illicit side of the drug war was a way of life. "That was just a lifestyle that a lot of people lived," says Woods. "And a lot of people relate to that lifestyle. And if you look up a federal institution and see how many people have 067 behind their number -- that means drugs -- that's a lot of them. It was a way out for everybody."
That way out of the inner city, of course, was also a way into the burgeoning U.S. prison system, where many of the incarcerated cling to books as emotional life rafts. Both Woods and Coleman credit prisoners for an appreciable chunk of their sales, and both have published authors living behind bars. In a recent Publishers Weekly article, Earl Cox, a publishing industry veteran who now runs a consultancy serving African-American writers, directly attributed the genre's rise to an increase in the prison population, particularly for drug-related crimes. "In the '80s and '90s, a lot of folks got locked up and wanted to write about it," Cox said. And, as Coleman pointed out, those same folks wanted to read about it, too.
"I make a lot of money off of inmates," says Woods. "There's a lot of money in jail. People have locked these guys up, mostly black men. And they've made society think that they're right for doing it. Half of those guys are nonviolent. Half of them are in there for drugs, from the '80s."
Inmates might find something recognizable in urban fiction; a character, situation or romance might ring particularly true. But what about the black kids devouring titles by Woods, Prince and others at an ever-growing pace? "I'm no expert on urban fiction ... I can see how people have concerns," says Henderson. "My personal opinion is, if it's a child reading it the parent needs to understand what the child is reading. If you're an adult, I would hope that you're responsible enough to understand that it's entertainment."
Gayles of Spelman College adds: "Young people do not know writers such as James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. One of the things that some educators are attempting to do in order to get children to read is: 'I'm going to give you literature you can relate to. So you don't have to read a Ralph Ellison -- that's not your world, that's not your time.'"
Is there a disconnect between the great traditional African-American writers and the authors driving street lit's sales? I ask Woods about her influences: Baldwin? Morrison?
"Jackie Collins. That's my bitch. That's my bitch right there." She turns to her fianci, Lou, who has accompanied her to lunch. "Lou, even you read Jackie Collins, right?"
"Yeah," says Lou, grudgingly.
"Fuckin' right."
Woods has a simple explanation for her own success that could just as easily explain the booming popularity of the genre that she works within.
"I guess at the end of the day, if I do nothing else, I will always give you a great story," she said. "You're going to get a hell of a story fucking with me. If my name is on it, you best believe: I'm better than the average fucking movie."
This story has been corrected since it was originally published.
About the writer
James Norton is the co-editor of Flak Magazine. He's also the author of the forthcoming book "Saving General Washington: Why Everything the Right Wing Tells You About Your Founders Is Wrong," due out this spring from Tarcher/Penguin.
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