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| ACTOR/RAPPER WILL SMITH WITH AUTHOR SISTER SOULJAH |
If you are familiar with Sister Souljah’s books then you probably are a huge fan of her cult classic, “
The Coldest Winter Ever”. The book centered around Winter Santiaga, a spoiled, materialistic, troubled teenaged daughter of a notorious drug dealer, who is sent to a group
home after her mother is shot in the face by her father’s enemies and her father is thrown in jail by the FBI. From there, she’s thrust into the fast life of hustling, stealing and using what she has to get what she wants until that lifestyle is
cut short when she is convicted of transporting drugs in her boyfriend’s
car. The book received such rave reviews when it was released that for some time, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Sister Souljah were entertaining the thought of bringing the book to the big screen.
This past weekend,
Sister Souljah promoted the release of the sequel to “
Coldest Winter Ever”, “A Deeper Love Inside
“, at Temple University in Philly with a discussion on love with Will Smith. While there, she revealed why it was time to tell the story from Winter’s sister’s perspective as well as why she felt it was important to tell the story of Midnight (Winter’s crush) in the books she released before the sequel. She also dished her thoughts on being labeled an “urban fiction writer” and Will added in his thoughts on how he was able to break out of the “
black movie” box.
Catch some highlights below:
In my first novel, ‘The Coldest Winter Ever’ it introduces with a poem, ‘There’s no such thing as love anymore…’ and the reason why the title of the book is “The Coldest Winter Ever” was because I thought it was a very cold era in time. Meaning that in our communities and in our hoods we had gotten so caught up with jewelry and cars and our material possessions that we all had more stuff, but we had less love. I thought by telling the story of “The Coldest Winter Ever,” we would discover that the love for the material was not enough to carry a family, through difficult times.
With [my next book] ‘Midnight: A Gangster Love Story’, people said, ‘Well, why did you call it a gangster love story, Midnight wasn’t a gangster in this book.’ Then, I said, ‘His love was gangster.’ In ‘Midnight: The Meaning of Love,’ it tells the story of the young man after he gets married, what he went through trying to keep his wife, maintain his family, and he basically went on a global adventure to get his wife back. And so, you got introduced to love in ‘Midnight: A Gangster Love Story‘ and then you got introduced to the love is just the first step, and then you have to maintain it. Let it evolve and revolve a little.
In ‘A Deeper Love Inside’, it’s now written by Winter in ‘The Coldest Winter Ever’ sister Porsche. She got caught up in the system with social services because her family was broken apart and she is the very emotional sister. She’s not as cold, smooth, and calculated as Winter but she’s a rough little ride. She has a lot of emotions and she tells a story that is different but I believe it is very exciting, and it brings us meaning all of us in our communities back to the fact that we need to have a deeper love inside for one another.
Will: What Is your hope that we take away from today?
Souljah: I just wanted to have a meaningful conversation in a very public way. I thought that if you listen to the radio in the morning and afternoon or you watch TV, there is a heavy emphasis on gossip and kind of meaningless talk. Its almost as if people are afraid to confront truth, and even in the reality show, there is no reality. I thought it would be nice for people in the community to gather to listen and engage with two people who love love, love our families, love our spouses, but we have to fight hard to make it work. So I thought that would be good for all of us and at least I hope it will be.
When Sister Souljah was asked her thoughts on the state of urban fiction today, she responded:
Number one, I think what I write is literature. People have the tendency to call it urban fiction because whenever black people come into a professional space and do very well, instead of people competing with us upright, they create a new label for it. So that you can be at the top of your game over there in that corner, but this is literature. I was a student. I studied very hard. I graduated from Rutgers University, I studied at University of Santa Monica, I went to prep school at Cornell University, so when I write, I don’t want anybody to create a new thing, this is literature.
I’m happy that a lot of new African faces have come into the world of publishing. I don’t look at it competitively at all. I look at it as new voices telling new stories. I think we are doing good on the creative side but for the economic side of controlling distribution, and the product, getting the lion’s share of the profit, I think on the business side of publishing, we have a long way to go.
Will Smith added:
I think there was also a very similar issue that Martin and I had when we decided to do “Bad Boys” together. It was two black leads and we had to stop people very early from referring to it very early as a black movie. This ain’t no black movie, what the hell is a black movie? No, this is a movie. And in my career that’s been a thing that I bumped into in the early days, and I was like put me up for any role that you are going to put Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise up for.
I’ve been talking to Tyrese a lot about that concept and he’s saying, ‘Man, I keep walking into these offices, and I’m trying to pitch my idea but back across the table all they see is a n-gga.’ I said, ‘If you stop walking in there as a n-gga…’ Change your perception! We had that conversation a few years ago and he switched it up and now he’s had movies that had bigger opening weekends than mine.
During the panel, both Will Smith and Sister Souljah discussed their marriages and how they were able to keep their love alive, even through the difficult times. We will post more on that, next week, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
