Urban Fact or Urban Fiction?

I love reading urban literature. I do not glorify the gritty crime ridden tales of blood and honor, but what I do know is that these stories hold some truth to them if not all. Just like your typical thriller, the author takes a complex fashion of facts and turns them into a series of plots turns, twists and most of all, romance. Thriller novels are often based on some sort of cold case murder, a string of murders, espionage, military or legal conflict and most recently, medical thrillers thanks to fabulous authors such as Tess Gerrittsen and Patricia Cornwell. But urban fiction can tell a deeper story than your day to day, shelf to shelf contemporary suspense novel. Urban fiction always represents a man or a woman with a gangster persona. Sometimes by choice, often times just to survive.

Urban fiction speaks of the ghettos from the early 1900's and the deadly games original gangsters played up until the heroic swagger often mixed with a two plus decade old musical genre of hip-hop. For example, Sister Souljah wrote,The Coldest Winter Ever back in 1998. Sister Souljah taught valuable lessons in this book. Taking a protagonist named Winter who will stop at nothing to get what she wants, her story portrays the many mistakes young females make when they are caught up in the street life. Not by accident, Winter is born into this type of life and this is pretty much all she knows. The vivid scenes of Brooklyn, NY (my original hometown), lets the reader feel as if they were right there on the same block as Winter faces a life of destruction.

Urban fiction is written from behind the walls. Those men and women who got caught up in the drug game, didn't want to go down without honor (often those that lose), and mainly because they did not snitch on those caught up in the same game to the enemy. The enemy being law enforcement. Snitching in the urban world is as serious as your momma telling you you'd better not drink up all her milk or cherry Kool-Aid.

Many have paved the way in urban fiction. Donald Goines was the first urban fiction author of my time that I came across in the late 80's. I swallowed such resolute tales like Black Girl Lost and Whoreson, imagining myself sitting along big-time gangsters like Daddy Cool. Growing up in an inner city and reading a book where one can relate allows the reader to take their imagination right there in their own neighborhood. Even reading urban non-fiction by Piri Thomas, a memoir entitled, Down These Mean Streets, portrays an in-depth look at the streets and prison and what it means to be a third-class citizen in a free land called America.

Others have followed and told stories of their time, making a huge impact on the African-American community. With lessons told and taught, a fan of urban fiction can be sure to walk away with a street-sense moral to the story.