Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons

FOUR: Fear of Books: Reading Urban Fiction

chapter four Fear of Books reading urban fiction I try to say there is more to life than urban books or true crime.—prison librarian This book, it gives me goosebumps how real it is! . . . I was Amen-ing at all this stuff going on because . . . there’s a lot of things in this book that I know.—wendy, Northeast Pre-Release Center african american urban fiction—also known as gangsta lit, street lit, ghetto fiction, and hip-hop fiction—has taken the U.S. publishing world by storm. Bearing titles such as Thugs and the Women Who Love Them, Forever a Hustler’s Wife, and Thug-a-Licious, urban books feature African Americans who are involved in urban street crime, including drug dealing, hustling, prostitution, and murder. The genre has gained immense popularity, particularly among young black women, since the 1999 publication of Sister Souljah’s best-selling novel The Coldest Winter Ever. Its roots extend further back, however, to African American novels about ghetto life such as Iceberg Slim’s Trick Baby (1967) and Pimp: The Story of My Life (1969) and Donald Goines’s Dopefiend (1971) and Whoreson: The Story of a Ghetto Pimp (1972).1 Although urban fiction writers struggled to find publishers for their work in the late 1990s—they often self-published their books and sold them on street corners, in clubs, and in barbershops and salons— some authors now sign six-figure contracts with major publishing houses, and urban books dominate the African American collections in large chain bookstores .2 Triple Crown Publications, an urban book publisher that was founded in 2001 by former prisoner Vickie Stringer, is now the largest independent publishing house in the country, and both Borders and Waldenbooks have estab- reading urban fiction | 141 lished specific sections of Triple Crown books. Many urban fiction writers are first-time authors, and a substantial number of those writers are prisoners; for instance, seven of the twenty-six authors sponsored by Triple Crown Publications are incarcerated.3 In the prisons where I conducted research, urban fiction is particularly popular among young, lower-class black women, but it has also gained popularity among some white women and middle-class black women. According to women involved in my study, urban books typically feature “a pimp or killer or drug dealer” or “just a everyday life situation: prison, baby mama drama, having a guy being a player.” The books often emphasize how characters “used to see their mother get beat up, or how they went to different groups and foster homes and prison,” and they sometimes involve courtroom scenes and characters’ efforts to “flee the police.” The genre has opened up a world of reading for many women who were not readers before coming to prison. Ronnie “didn’t read hardly at all,” but she “was hooked” after discovering urban fiction. Now, she explains, “I keep reaching out and reaching out until I find more and more. They all just been good books. They talk about real life.” Urban books are a frequent topic of conversation among prisoners as they sit in the cafeteria or spend time outside, and when I began my study, a few of the participants were involved in an informal reading club that focuses on Triple Crown books. From immersing myself in the genre, I have learned that urban books frequently foreground racial disparities in the administration of justice and underscore the difficulty of trying to achieve economic security in a racialized capitalist system. Many of the books pay particular attention to the toll that urban living takes on black men; the protagonists’ fathers are often dead or imprisoned , and most male characters have been involved in the criminal justice system . Urban books also underscore the struggles that black women face in trying to achieve economic security and establish healthy, long-term relationships with black men. Some novels emphasize the sexual needs and desires of their female protagonists, and they question the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse that female characters endure in order to secure men’s financial patronage.4 In focusing on the hardships that men and women of color face in the United States, many urban books implicitly justify characters’ criminal actions as legitimate resistance to white oppression. At the same time, the books typically feature protagonists who survive the system. They often portray a black male character who is extremely powerful, wealthy, wise enough to survive the game, and gentle enough to meet all the needs of the...