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PART 5: Thinking Outside the Box

What kills me is when people write a certain genre because it’s hot at the moment. Back in the 90’s, everybody and their mamas wanted to write about relationships because the “chick-lit-sista-girl” novels were poppin’.

I remember hittin’ up Barnes and Noble around my way back in the late 90’s. Finding novels other than stories that copied the Waiting to Exhale formula was like finding a Black man at a Klan rally.

Fast forward to 2009, and all you see is pretty much street fiction and erotica. I’ve asked myself before writing my first book, “There has to be more to the Black experience than sex, crime, violence, and poverty with a positive message weaved between them.”

I’m not here to tell people what the hell to write. What people eat doesn’t make me shit. However, my philosophy in life is, if everybody’s wearing white in the room, I’m rockin’ black.

In other words, I made a conscious effort to add some socio-poltical topics in my book like gentrification to separate myself from the rest of the pack.

Gentrification is pretty much another way of saying, “We kickin' your ass out if you can’t afford the land and tax increases.” And as a native Chicagoan who’ve experienced gentrification second hand, I thought it was only right for me to shed light on gentrification that is CURRENTLY happening in Harlem and Brooklyn, as well as in other urban cities in America.

If everybody in Black fiction was on some Black Power tip, best believe you’ll see me hit em off with some erotica just to mix it up a bit. I don’t like to do what everybody else is doing. It’s bad enough that I get tired of negroes keep telling me I look like Neyo every time I rock fedora hats.

...but that's another issue.

I’ll be pissed the hell off if those same authors who currently write nothing but street fiction and erotica ditch those genres if politically charged topics all of a sudden became popular, especially when they had to chance to drop jewels to the masses earlier in their literary careers.

So on that note, legacy is everything in whatever you do. There were several other Street Fiction writers back in the 60’s and 70’s, and even earlier than those times. Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim are the only two who stand out.

Enuff said.

This note has been approved by King Dhakir @ www.kingdhakir.com

Peace

-King