The Coldest Winter Ever (47 page)

On the night of the show, no one was more excited than me. I had never seen so many beautiful young girls, decorated and adorned so perfectly. Their styles were so original, carefully crafted and alluring. They had outdone Hollywood, Fifth Avenue, and Paris. They stopped me in my tracks as I watched with my jaw dropped open. The cats were correct also. They had leathers and suedes, Gucci and Louis Vuitton prints, all arranged differently than how they were offered and sold in the department stores. The tailor had hooked it up just right. They looked better. They complemented the black physique and style superbly. They strolled into the theater slowly, mindful of being admired. Their heads were held high. They were surrounded by entourages, they were at least as famous as the rap stars on the stage.

When the curtain opened and the first act appeared the crowd went wild. I watched from backstage. I could see the audience head on. No one could have accurately described the love, enthusiasm, dedication, and complete obedience the artists received from this crowd unless they were actually there. I watched a thousand youth and young adults get up and recite every rhyme. They danced, screamed, cheered for whatever building, block, or borough they hailed from. They acknowledged the hustlers in the crowd and box seats. It was incredible.

That night we had two shows. We made all the money for the buses, the kids, the camp, the staff, and all the related fees. The homeless children were backstage in disbelief that the same artists whom they worshipped had paused to give something back to them. I was mindful that it was incredible that the hip-hop stars were all between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. I was twenty-one; the youth we were working with and for were six through sixteen. We had made a complete unified leap forward and we were all barely adults.

I never got swept away by the entertainment world. I remain, even today, close to the earth. I still run an annual summer camp for our youth. Now it is financed by Sean P. Diddy Combs. I don’t have to go out and make the money myself anymore. Over time, I have seen the young come under my guidance and direction and go from crack families to become chemical engineers, social workers, teachers, and doctors.

On the writer’s side, I developed a careful eye. I learned the difference between the young teenage male selling drugs hand to hand for basic survival and the men who had the box seats, the cars, trucks, jewels, homes, and riches. I learned the difference between one-hit wonders and huge hip-hop stars that go on to create empires. I know the difference in the way a man feels when he can earn and when he can’t. I know the difference between street girls and college girls and professional black women. I know the difference between friends and enemies, the used and the users. I know the difference between love and sex, between life and death, between incarceration and freedom. Every writer needs to know the difference between one thing and another. It is critical to creating, developing, and shaping characters who are so natural and so authentic that people read your work then go looking for them as if they really exist.

I went on to promote similar hip-hop events over a seven-year period. I went from drawing audiences of 1,000 to audiences of 30,000. I went from promoting shows with LL Cool J, Doug E. Fresh, Slick Rick, and Public Enemy, to promoting shows with Notorious B.I.G. and Lauryn Hill and the Fugees. They were all community shows with a conscious purpose. Many of the artists became aquaintances and friends. One business led to another. I became a real part of the black community on every level. I was no longer just an intellectual who could only read and speak about it and not be about it. I was now respected as someone who criticizes constructively, but also builds institutions, and organizations. I became known as someone who gathered alot and shared alot. I became known as a woman who was respected for her mind, thoughts, words, and actions, whose physical appearance was nice but not all up in your face.

The authenticity in
The Coldest Winter Ever,
the story line and characters, comes from having lived a real, full life. The richness comes from having walked and worked among and beside all kinds of people from the poorest, who may in fact have been the most colorful, to the mediocre and wealthy. There is a difference between writers who are impatient and writers who are patient. There is a difference between writers who live in front of a television or inside a movie theater and writers who live by doing, working, participating, talking, and observing. There is a difference between writers who live on one particular block, or in one particular place, and those who move all around the globe. There is a difference between writers who have read
and studied the great writings of powerful writers who came before them, and those who have not. There is a difference between writers who have had the discipline to at some point sit still and study the craft of writing and those who have not. I would say to all up-and-coming writers that you need to first be willing to learn, to be observant and patient. You must also live life, build something, do something, develop something. It is the only way to sit down and create an authentic work with vivid descriptions and compelling characters. Capturing the truth of the human soul and experience and weaving it together like a fine tapestry is creating characters, voices, and scenes that will live forever.

4. Why did you decide to include yourself as a character in the novel
The Coldest Winter Ever?

As an author, the first task you have is to make the reader care about your story. If you can create an emotion in the reader in the first paragraph, you can be certain that you got ’em. If you fail to create an emotion right away, you lose the reader.

At the time that I penned
The Coldest Winter Ever,
I knew I was both loved and hated by hundreds and thousands of people. When the main character in the story, Winter Santiaga, stated up front that she hated Sister Souljah, she created an instant emotion in the readers who knew and loved me. They would naturally be curious and defensive. They would feel something that would drag them right into the tale.

For the people who hated me, there would be a feeling of solidarity with Winter, and the great expectation that yes! Sister Souljah is about to be challenged and exposed. As a result, they would also be dragged into the story.

Besides, females competing and fighting is cheered on in American society. Many people love to read about it, witness it, and choose sides. For African women it is outright expected that we hate each other. It is known but not discussed that we have many conscious and subconscious problems with image, complexion, identity, culture, finance, love, community, and family.

Also, as a literary technique, I thought it was clever to have the protagonist, Winter Santiaga, and the antagonist, Sister Souljah, in reverse positions. After all, the protagonist is supposed to be not only
the principle character, the protagonist is supposed to be the leader of a cause, the one whom the reader cheers for. The fact that the reader ends up cheering resoundingly for Winter, the drug dealer’s daughter; who uses, abuses, and manipulates people, is revealing and refreshing to me. Because, in America, it happens in real life. Those who are doing what we have traditionally accepted as being wrong, get the most attention. They are seen as the most cool, sensual, sexual, and acceptable. As the reader cheers for Winter no matter how deadly her behavior becomes in the story, I am hoping that the reader will pause and ask, What do I believe? What kind of person am I? What is right? What is wrong? What kind of woman would I like to be and/or become? Or, What kind of woman would I like to love? Or, What kind of daughter would I like to raise?

In the meantime, I am hopeful that as Sister Souljah the character, who attempts to do right in the world, becomes more and more of a nuisance in the story, it will cause readers to ask themselves why is it so common to reject and even hate the people who are helping in a real way to reverse the tide of evil? What do helpful/activist types of people really make you think and feel? Are their lives and their work a complete waste of time? Should they stop completely and get a “real” job? Or, is there some value in what they have dedicated themselves to? Is the actual truth that helpers and activists can only be loved after they’re dead? Or should the community consider their continuous contributions while they’re living, conscious, and available to be appreciated?

Overall, I knew by including myself in the story, I was giving readers a compass to find their way. I would have been wrong and guilt ridden to simply throw readers into Winter’s world without a way to navigate themselves toward what I perceive to be the truth. To do so would’ve been to create another piece that glorifies greed, and excuses violence, and leads young males and females astray.

5. When and where were you when you first started writing
The Coldest Winter Ever?

Writing is a process. No one just sits down and lets it rip. In 1993 I started breastfeeding my son. The whole adventure of getting married, then giving birth to my child was the richest and most peaceful period of time in my life. It was also the most emotional time in my
life. It was the most sensitive I had ever been. My thoughts became even deeper. It was the most isolated and secluded I have ever been, personally by choice, politically by design. Knowing that I had released into this world a new life made me feel even more responsible for improving cultural, economic, and social conditions. In other words, it was the best time to get writing. I felt if the twenty year olds didn’t write of love, work, life, war, and death, then the teens would not know about or be prepared to make better choices. If the thirty year olds did not write, then the twenty year olds would not know. If the forty year olds did not write, then the thirty year olds wouldn’t know what to expect and build toward, and so on. I started by scribbling notes on odd pieces of paper. While out buying things for our baby, I would pick up random notepads and jot down thoughts and ideas, then tuck them into my private library. I knew I wanted to be a part of stopping the cycle of stupidity in our community. I knew that to do so, I had to write something that kids and adults could take home and devour, learn from, and share, and pass on.

It’s funny. When you find peace in your personal life the word goes out. The simple discovery of it brings people from miles around to come take a look. They want to know is it possible? Is it real? Can it last? Can it happen in more than this one case? Two youths who came seeking my counsel in 1993 were the perfect examples of absolute black beauty, grace, and talent. Yet they were the examples also of social, cultural, and spiritual chaos. I was not able to be a mother to them. I was not old enough. However, I could be their older sister. I knew that sharing my experiences, observations, philosophies, and beliefs would help them at least to know what their options could and would be and what the consequences of their choices would feel and be like. I started to think about how I had received thousands of letters from youth wanting guidance, none of them famous like Lauryn Hill and Tupac Shakur. Yet they all deserved it. Young people deserve hearing the truth from any wise and balanced adult. I knew that it was essential that I continue to create life-altering writings, fiction and nonfiction.

The bulk of
The Coldest Winter Ever
was written in Jamaica in 1995. I was still breast-feeding. (I did so for the first three years of my son’s life.) After successfully producing a concert for Lauryn and the Fugees, which 30,000 young black and Latino New Yorkers attended to watch the most famous artist in hip-hop worldwide perform and
speak in a free outdoor concert in Harlem, N.Y., we flew to Jamaica. Because everyone on my producing team had worked so hard, I thought it would be cool to share the production fee and bring them. On what was my first trip to Jamaica, me, my husband, and son were accompanied by ten others.

The Waterhouse section of Kingston, Jamaica, is a straight up ghetto. My Jamaican-Panamanian husband had always made jokes about me being a Yankee girl from the projects. I was shocked standing in the huts his people called home. With very little food, and “no water at the moment,” his relatives who insisted that we stay with them and not in a hotel, escorted us to the bed where all ten of us were supposed to sleep. I looked around in complete amazement. My eyes shot toward my husband, the five female workers, the five male workers, and then fell onto my son. My husband smiled. We bounced to a resort.

After a comfortable sleep each night, I’d roam into the Jamaican streets and ghettoes. I watched grown men and women walking around outside wearing no shoes, while hungry goats mill about. I became sad. Despite having run around the world, I had never been to the islands. Over the years, however, I had met plenty of youth and famous music artists from Jamaica. They were all ten times more proud than anyone else. They were always the ones careful to big up the African culture. They were always the ones to encourage the natural, cherish the family. Bob Marley was their undisputed king.

But clearly there was so much unfinished business in Jamaica. There was massive poverty. Yet there was a new generation who refused to love the land and grow foods. They felt farming was beneath them. There was an ocean, yet there was not enough fish for everyone to eat at mealtime. There were black workers anxious to accommodate white tourists but visibly and verbally hostile to the black tourist. There were girls everywhere, naked with foul attitudes and a miseducation.

It was the Jamaican ghetto climate that encouraged me to finish
The Coldest Winter Ever,
an exploration of not only ghetto life, but ghetto psychology and the set-up that people in hoods everywhere face. While there I also completed four songs (unreleased). Once again I was shook into producing something that I hoped would resurrect the human soul, and save the women and men from an obvious and evil cycle of destruction.

6. Which character did you create first?