“People carried around needles in their pockets. “It was explained to me and my brothers and sisters as a life-or-death situation,” she said. “And it doesn’t end nicely, almost ever.”Īs a child, she lived in fear of the heroin epidemic. “It was my desire to show our people that this lifestyle that we glorify is actually a death-style,” she said. Having grown up (as Lisa Williamson) in the South Bronx during the drug-ravaged ‘70s and ‘80s, she says she wrote “The Coldest Winter Ever” as a cautionary tale. Souljah’s books counter the caricature of her as an advocate of violence. Walter Mosley, Luis Rodriguez, the coiner of #BlackLivesMatter and others sketch a hopeful future for L.A. I want to write something that you never would have imagined.”īooks How does L.A.’s racial past resonate now? #BlackLivesMatter’s originator and 5 writers discuss “And I say, as an author, if I write what any reader expects me to write then I’ve failed because that means the readers could have written the book. “People have said, ‘It’s so unexpected,’” said Souljah. True to Souljah’s insistence on consequences, the sequel begins with a hard shock: Winter is dead, stuck in a purgatory known as the Last Stop Before the Drop, and given one last chance to avoid eternal damnation.

Finally, 22 years later, Winter is back in “Life After Death,” out this week. “But the character was always alive in my imagination,” Souljah said. She even planned to write a Ricky story (and still hopes to). So instead she wrote spinoffs: three books about Midnight, the handsome and capable lieutenant of Winter’s father, Ricky Santiaga, and one about Winter’s younger sister Porsche, who ends up in juvenile detention. There are real consequences to the things that happen in real life.” “Like ‘ Ta-da! Here she is,’ and it’s all good. “I didn’t want to feed the hood a fantasy that going to prison is a joke or a cakewalk,” she said. “Quite naturally, the book company and everyone expected me to write the sequel,” said Souljah by phone from the United Arab Emirates, where she had gone to find “peace of mind” and to finish a draft of the book’s long-awaited screen adaptation.īut because Winter Santiaga‘s story had ended with a mandatory 15-year prison sentence, Souljah felt she had to wait until Winter’s time was served. Needless to say, the publisher wanted more. “ The Coldest Winter Ever” was one of the best-selling novels of 1999 and has since sold more than a million copies. Its heroine, Winter Santiaga, the pampered daughter of a Brooklyn drug kingpin, uses her feminine wiles and hustler mentality to survive after her father’s empire suddenly comes crashing down. In 1999, Sister Souljah published her first novel, “ The Coldest Winter Ever,” considered to be the mother of what’s been called urban or street fiction and its first classic. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.

Life after death sister