For good or for bad, street lit is eating up the African-American book world at the moment. In bookstores where there used to be just one or two small shelves of “street life” books, now there are whole sections.
The titles of the paperbacks pretty much say it all: “No Way Out,” “The Last Kingpin,” “Payback’s a Bitch,” “Thugs and the Women Who Love Them,” “Bad Girlz.” In the same way rap music muscled melodious soul tunes off the charts, street lit is altering the equation of African-American publishing.
Street lit “is the hottest thing going right now,” says Simba Sana, co-owner of Karibu, a small Washington chain featuring books by and about African-Americans. There, the paperback fiction best-seller list is dominated by street lit, a.k.a. urban lit, gangsta lit or hip-hop fiction: “Do or Die,” “Me and My Boyfriend,” “A Thug’s Life” and “A Project Chick.”
The last title is the second novel by Nikki Turner, whose two books are also among the top-10 favorites on the Essence magazine’s August paperback fiction best-seller list. Turner is near the top of the street literati hierarchy, as are Vickie Stringer and Shannon Holmes. But there are scores of other hip-hop novelists cranking out rough-hewn, rumble-tumble stories.
Until now, the books have mostly been self-published and sold by the authors on sidewalks and in music clubs. But street lit is such a happening thing that big-time American publishers are catching the fever. Simon & Schuster has signed Stringer and Holmes to its Atria imprint, and Random House has tapped Turner for its One World division.
“This whole street lit movement is recent,” says Carol Mackey, senior editor of Black Expressions, a book-of-the-month club for African-American readers that boasts a membership of 400,000 nationwide. “I consider it a trend.”
People are buying street lit because they identify with the harsh realities, Mackey says. Most Black Expressions members are women, and all are black, she says. And they are buying street lit titles by the thousands, Mackey says. “They are being sold on every street corner. They are selling like hot cakes.”
Some critics say the new genre is not to be confused with the classic naturalistic style of Richard Wright or James Baldwin. That would be like comparing P. Diddy to Duke Ellington. Street lit lacks the literary ambition, and the power, of great writing.
Ethelbert Miller, who teaches creative writing at Bennington College and runs the African-American Resource Center at Howard University, says of street lit authors, “I might teach these writers in a sociology class, but not in a literature class.”
Poet Sterling Plumpp, who taught at the University of Illinois for 30 years, says that contemporary hip-hop writing “is the most inventive thing happening to the language in a long time.”
Street lit, he says, “should be promoted.”
The big-time publishers are seeing to that. With visions of profits dancing in their heads, they are scarfing up the street literati right off the curbs.
Melody Guy, head of Random House’s multicultural imprint, One World, says that Turner’s novels are mostly about “young women who are surviving in this urban world and how they ultimately persevere.
“There is a lot of sex and lot of drama. People seem to be responding in an amazing way. People want what she’s doing.”
What is street lit?
The telltale signs usually include a shut-your-mouth title, straightforward sentences, vast amounts of drugs, sex and rap music and varying degrees of crime and punishment.
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and Drew Sottardi (dsottardi@tribune.com)
