White Lines II

White Lines II: Sunny
Tracey Brown

One of my “literary pet peeves” is “ contemporary street lit”- books about hustler’s  Wives and what not that glorify and glamourize a life that usually ends in the graveyard or a jail cell.  I detest these type of books and stay as far away from them as I can. With that being said, I’m still not sure how I came across the original White Lines but I ended up loving it. It was one book which showed that while it looks like glitz and glamour what’s underneath is often the furthest thing from it.

Over the years I’d seen other Tracey Brown books on the shelves, but I  was only interested in White Lines so imagine my surprise when I found one was finally published.

White Lines II begins a few years after the first one left off. I admits that I had to go back and skim WL, because it had been so long ( 5 years!) since I read the original but in the sequel, Sunny is enjoying life a wife and mother but yet still grieving the loss of her beloved Dorian. She’s come a long way since giving up her addiction a few years ago and aided by 2 stints in rehab is doing good. Except she sometimes misses her old life- the parties, the glitz and glamour and on a trip for her latest business venture,  she finds what she has been missing both in her love life and in her “secret”. As she struggles to maintain both, she ends up risking everything.

While the book mainly focuses on Sunny,  we are also reintroduced to Jada ( my favorite character) who is trying to re-kindle her relationship with Born despite their past and raise her son Sheldon who is fighting his own set of demons. There are some other minor characters- Jada’s sister Ava, Olivia and Zion, whom I gather are from her other books.  As Sunny fight her growing dependence on her old friend, Jada struggles with her own demons regarding her child, his father and her actions while pregnant.

I realize this book was about Sunny and while I enjoyed her perspective, I have to say that I found Jada’s storyline much more interesting and almost wish this was focused just on her.

This book ends in the ultimate cliffhanger and after seeing that this was just recently published, I hope we don’t have to wait too long for the sequel because I am dying to know what happens next.

This book was as gritty or as real to me as WL was, there was lots of references to designer clothing and cars that I don’t remember from the first one but that seems to be a staple in Urban fiction  which I honestly find annoying to describe every outfit complete with what designers- Chanel dress, Loubotioun shoes). Aside from that I enjoyed this book almost as much as the original but it seemed lacking in character development in some areas- for instance- Ava just seemed to be thrown in there for good measure at times- there wasn’t much character development going on there.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It doesn’t live up to WhiteLines in my book, buts its solid on its own and I definitely wasn’t disappointed.

Death Around The Corner

Death around the Corner

C-Murder

***** ( 5/5)

I am not a fan of street-lit, worse yet I am not a big fan of rappers trying to act, much less writing. When I heard that C-Murder wrote a book- fiction no less, I rolled my eyes, hard. Then I happened to read an excerpt from the book in one issue of Vibe magazine and gasp! - It actually sounded good. Well written, grammatically correct, interesting. I was shocked and but still put off actually purchasing the book for a while. I mean any excerpt could sound good and be grammatically correct. Plus I didn’t’ think I could handle the looks on my friends faces when I would tell them what I was reading. However, that excerpt was good, it has a solid 5 star amazon.com rating, and so eventually I broke down and bought the book and all I can say is WOW.

At times I wondered if there was a ghostwriter (nope- at the end he tells the story of how, when, why he wrote the book) besides I’m not sure anyone at Vibe could write this well. I’ll admit, I went into this book very skeptical, looking for mistakes and anything I could find and I didn’t find anything. This book has it all character development (great character development) a good, solid plot, a good style, a viable theme, great , realistic dialoige, all that other stuff from HS English. However, most importantly it has a ( realistic) story and a purpose. It's not just glorifying like some of the other street trash lit that is polluting the shelves.

Death around the Corner introduces us to Daquan. Born and bred in the Calliope (CP3), Daquan gets an early and real introduction to the streets. He continues on this path as one of the youngest and most respected hustlers in NOLA, until he finds his passion, in music. DATC follows Daquan as he tries to make this transition from the streets to the studio. It’s a coming of age story for a totally different set. We had Flyy Girl & Coldest Winter Ever, I believe DATC will slip on the shelves right between those two as the quintessential ‘hood coming of age story. It’s a book cross between Boyz in da hood an ATL (that’s the best I could do- its closer to Boyz in da hood, but updated and for a different part of the world- A southern Boyz in da hood!)

It was a pleasant surprised by this I truly enjoyed this book. C-Murder is very talented writer I am actually looking forward to future works by him.

http://www.deatharoundthecorner.com

Please not that this is an urban book. The language and the descriptions are very real and gritty. This book is not for the faint of heart. That being said- this book is not vulgar either- Just real. Real talk, real language (profanity, use of the n-word and the h-word, street slang), real vivid streets scenes ( drugs, sex ext.) if you listen to rap music or are from the streets, hood, inner-city or whatever you call it- you will not have any problems, otherwise be warned.This book is probably rated R.

I am NOT looking forward to future Vibe books ( I read the excerpt from the next book- that is exactly what I was expecting). Maybe another publisher will pick up C’s next work.

*On another note I once wrote a homage to No Limit Records and my love for them circa 1998, on my now defunct LJ blog. Please click here to read it.

White Lines

White Lines

Tracey Brown

At first, when this book kept coming up “recommended" on amazon.com, I rolled my eyes and tried to make it go away. I was thinking that it was just your average “street fiction”, ( for my views on street-lit, check read here or the last paragrpah here) but the five star reviews on Amazon piqued my interest so I gave in and ordered it. And am glad that it kept coming up and that I finally wore down and ordered it.

White Lines is the story of Born and Jada, their loves and their struggles on the streets of New York. Teenaged Jada, runs away from home and falls into the drug world while teenaged Born watches his father, a well –known hustler make his life from the drug trade. Born follows in his father’s footsteps and sets out to become the biggest hustler NYC has ever seen. Meanwhile, Jada cleans up and meets born and what happens next is a love story for the ages. All love stories don’t have to be Nicholas Sparks or Nora Roberts ( i.e. traditional) and obviously this one isn’t, but it is one of the truest love stories that I’ve ever read. The story begins in the late 80’s and follows Born and Jada on their paths together and apart, in what is one of the best books of 2007 ( yes, I know it is only February).

Ms. Brown doesn’t sugar coat things, not does she glorify them either ( hallelujah). She tells it like it is, with heart and clarity. The writing is clear and concise and the story is beautiful in the same way that life is. Of course it is not only a love story. In a sense it is still probably classified as “street lit” and there is no shortage of the raw and gritty scenes, however it is so well done- well written, with excellent characters and also very well edited.

I finished this book in a record 2 days, which isn’t an easy feat- this book is thick at 512 pages (paperback), but worth every single page. I then passed it on to my sister who read it in a record 3 days (she’s in HS taking 4 AP courses) - so that itself should extol ( :) ) how much I enjoyed this book.