The first time 16-year-old Jordan Richardson critiqued a book that wasn’t for school was during a meeting of the DREAM Readers book club at Martin Library.
That was 18 months ago when the teen club was new and the library just building up its collection of “street lit,” a gritty genre of African-American writing often dominated by urban street life — fast cars, rap music, sex, drugs and varying degrees of crime and punishment.
“I thought it was cool to read and talk about them,” said the 11th-grader at William Penn Senior High School.
The club gives her a place to recommend titles and learn of those she shouldn’t miss.
April Murray, a Martin Library volunteer, decided to start an urban book club when she noticed the street
lit titles were never on the shelf.
Fans put the books on hold. Teenagers swapped the volumes with peers. Former non-readers got library cards.
This spring, the library devoted its National Library Week celebration to street lit, featuring scholars and authors such as Shannon Holmes, who did an informal Q&A session with the book club.
“If you have kids who want to read, you want to encourage that,” said Murray, who manages a branch of Susquehanna Bank in York.
Murray and a small corps of adult volunteers meet monthly with about a dozen youth in a basement library classroom. They don’t limit their reading list to urban fiction — in fact, Murray requires the teens be open to other genres. This year, they extended their meetings over the summer to continue sharing opinions and paperbacks.
Street lit has its critics: They say the books snuff out imagination, or the genre sensationalizes violence, promiscuous sex and the thug life in general. Racy images and saucy titles on the book covers can draw scowls, as well.
Doubters at Martin Library questioned its growing urban fiction collection, suggesting the covers were offensive to blacks, Murray said.
“I say, you can’t judge a book by its cover,” she said. “I mean, there was a time that people thought Jackie Collins was offensive.”
Vanessa Morris is a former librarian for teens who developed an urban fiction collection for the Free Library of Philadelphia. She said other classics, such as S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders” and today’s Judy Blume favorites were once considered transgressive in young adult literature.
“The kids are going to read what they’re going to read,” said Morris, who teaches library science at Clarion University. “Those things might look risky to us, but it’s not to the teens. If you have a teen who develops a reading habit, then their level of literacy is going to be higher as they go through life.”
The students of DREAM Readers came up with the club’s name, which stands for Devoted to Reaching goals, Ending violence, Achieving greatness and Making a change.
At a recent meeting, the novel under scrutiny was “First Semester,” by Cecil B. Cross II. It chronicles the trials of JD Dawson, a teen from “da ‘hood” during his first semester of freshman year at the University of Atlanta.
Facilitator Kelly Johnson asked the five girls assembled for their thoughts.
“Boring, then hyped. Boring, then hyped,” said Angelina Hall, 16, who goes to school with Jordan.
“The ending. We got to talk about the ending, Miss Kelly,” Jordan begged, referring to JD’s affair with his older, female tutor.
“I was going off when she was talking about how she was HIV-positive, and she tried to kill herself. I was like, omigod, this is too much drama. It shows you should use protection at all times. . . . He should have used a condom.”
Angelina added, “The tutoring went too far.”
Street lit is popular among urban teens because the narratives are relatable and often exciting, said Marc Lamont Hill, 29, a professor in Temple University’s urban education department.
“The language of the books is rooted in the hip-hop culture. It’s linked to experiences people understand, experienced or aspire to experience,” he said. “These books are about identity development.”
They’re written in a familiar dialect and on a level the young readers can easily comprehend.
There can be a disconnect between urban street life and what’s pictured on TV or in the polar-realities of literature, Morris said.
“‘Why isn’t this what I’m experiencing?’ Street lit comes along and says, ‘No, what you’re experiencing is real.’ It’s a validation of your life experiences. ‘No, you’re not crazy. This is not over the top. This is what other people experience,’” she said.
Morris says the genre can help urban teens look at life more critically. The stories encourage resistance to unsavory people and places, allowing them to carve out a sober space within their neighborhoods, she said.
“Every time I think street lit has gone over the top,” she said, “I’ll hear another real-life story that tops the fiction.”
Street lit writers, said author Holmes, write about what they know best.
“For me, it’s the streets and the urban jails,” said Holmes, 35, of Charlotte, N.C. “That was my reality.”
Holmes, whose latest is “Bad Girlz 4 Life,” said he peddled drugs for years, including sales in York, which is mentioned in his novels.
While imprisoned in Huntingdon County, a fellow inmate inspired him to start writing. His books are intended as a cautionary tale to youth aspiring to the life he once led.
“I try to explain the repercussions behind our choices,” he said.
Angelina’s mom, Vanessa Gibson, loves the reading habit her daughter has developed. The content of urban fiction doesn’t concern her.
“It’s reality today,” Gibson said. “That’s what I look for when I read. A lot of kids have a rough life, even here in Pennsylvania itself, and nobody really wrote about it. It’s very, very good that these kids continue to read like she does.”
Article by Melissa Nann Burke (York Daily News)
