Hip-hop, for years the dominant force in music and youth culture, is now making noise in the book business.
Readers are likely to find fiction classics by Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison alongside copies of “Baby Momma Drama,” “A Hustler’s Wife” and other gritty urban novels.
“Street lit–or hip-hop books–is the hottest trend right now,” says Calvin Reed, a writer who covers the African-American market for Publishers Weekly magazine.
It’s a trend sparking controversy because of the novels’ graphic content.
“It’s a category that recalls books like the classic blaxploitation fiction by authors Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim that was influential during the 1970s, when films such as ‘Superfly’ and ‘Coffy’ were popular,” Reed said.
The subject matter is the same–hustlers, pimps and drug dealers–but this new generation of books is influenced by gangsta rap and hip-hop music, Reed said. Many of the books are self-published and sold by street vendors in New York.
“Authors like Zane started out publishing her own books and selling them on her Web site,” he said. “Now she’s published by Atria Books.”
Books such as Zane’s novels offer different perspectives on urban African-American life, said Malaika Adero, an editor at Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster.
“It’s attracting both male and female young readers,” Adero said. “The ages range from teens on up to people in their 40s.”
Travis Hunter has caught the wave of urban fiction with his novel “Trouble Man” (Villard, $22.95), a hard-edged tale about a drug dealer with a conscience who eventually redeems himself.
“These kinds of books have been around for years, but what’s old is new again,” said Hunter, 34. “Hip-hop is so big, and it’s so gritty, people are jumping on that.”
Between 1992 and 2000, the amount of money spent by African-Americans on books doubled to $356 million, according to Target Market News. Census figures for 2000 showed that book buying by black households rose by 26 percent, or three times the rate for white consumers, in a five-year period.
At the African-American Literature Book Club online, Troy Johnson said he has noticed a strong surge in sales in street lit books.
“Titles like ‘Bad Girls’ are doing better than Edward Jones’ ‘The Known World,’ ” Johnson said. “You can’t ignore these books. Some people are reading them out of curiosity. One woman said she felt dirty after reading one of these novels, but she said she couldn’t put it down.”
The content may be disturbing to some, but every book has some kind of positive message, said Carl Weber, whose “Baby Momma Drama” was a No. 1 best seller on Essence’s list in 2003.
“It’s not like a drug dealer is getting away with it,” said Weber, founder of Urban Books in New York and the author of the new novel “Player Haters” (Kensington, $24).
The main thing is getting kids to read, he said.
“I grew up reading street books, books about the neighborhood I grew up in,” Weber said. “From there, I ended up with an MBA and a CPA. My kids read all this urban fiction, and we have great conversations about it.”
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Edited by Curt Wagner (cwwagner@tribune.com) and Victoria Rodriguez (vrodriguez@tribune.com)
