English 113
22 February 2014
Urban Fiction
Urban fiction is very popular among African Americans. Urban fictions is also known as street lit, the genre is usually set in a city landscape however the genre is as much defined by the socio-economic realities and cultures of its characters as the urban setting(urban grit). While this maybe if not the most criticized genre it’s also one of the most popular ones also. It has allowed a lot of the under the radar writers to become well known. Like Ms. Wahida Clark who I will be talking a lot more about later in this paper. I’m a huge fan of hers.
Urban fiction are books that are somewhat gritty, raw and set in a dangerous or violent urban landscape the storylines of these book tend to focus on tough African American characters with strong themes of survival by any means necessary(urban grit). Early criticism of street lit was that books were badly edited due to lack of copy editing by independent publishers, however in recent years the mainstream publishing industry recognized the genres potential and signed many street lit authors to contracts (wiki). Some people also call it street lit because most believe that they only involved drugs, sex and violence. Which is so far from the truth. I have read so many urban lit and I can say that yes some books are exactly how most would describe but there are authors such as sister souljah who books are all about inspirations and shows us woman how to stand up for ourselves I can honestly say that I have learned so much from reading her books. Writer like Omar Tyree and Nikki Turner are a little different from sister souljah they display the sex and adultery not that it’s okay but its life and I think that the critics’ need to understand that these things happen in real life weather you want to believe it or not. As a reader I prefer to read truth whether it’s urban fiction and another genre. So as I was doing my research I found out that this was actually an...