Sister Souljah Releases Third Book In 'Midnight' Series

On November 11th 2015, author/activist Sister Souljah released her new book A Moment Of Silence: Midnight III. Recently I spoke with her about her books and if the highly publicized unjust killings and police brutality taking place in our communities influenced her latest book, one that is centered around police injustice.

Read more of my chat with the Bronx native below.

BAW: Tell me about the history and impact of your work.

Sister Souljah: I have 6 books. I’ve sold millions of copies. A couple of my books are read in public high schools, a couple of my books are accepted as official high school credit for summer readings and certified by the Board of Education in New York and also in California and a few other places. Of course every writer, every published author is looking to have their work have an impact.”

Are you in both public and private schools?

“Well I’m in a lot of universities around the country. Some of the universities are private, some are public but my books are used on a university level. Some of these books are recommended by their professors. The books are the leading African-American works of literature. So if a university wants to be current they have to have Sister Souljah books as a part of their curriculum.”

Tell me about your new book A Moment Of Silence: Midnight III.

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The series grew out of The Coldest Winter Ever, which was my first novel. My second novel was Midnight: A Gangster Love Story. So this was my third novel in the Midnight series. All of the books actually come from The Coldest Winter Ever, all of the characters originate in The Coldest Winter Ever. This book tells a story of the most high-pressure, high period of the character Midnight. The point at which this very organized, very faithful man is living a very wonderful life, living in Brooklyn in the projects with his family and handling business.

It’s the point at which one moment of rage throws him into a very dark place. And for the dark place it’s prison, drug dealers, dirty police, justice, injustice, inmates, you know. Which is a coming of age story—a coming of age series. And this is the point at which the character experiences what 25% of the African-American male population in real life experiences every single day. Whether that’s court supervision, parole, incarceration, arrests, abuse by the police, false accusations, all the things that are actually happening today. This character is encountering those things at this point in his fictional life at this point in the series.

Did the recent public recognition of our unjust justice system influence this book?

Absolutely not. There are 2 million people incarcerated in the U.S. and a huge portion of them are African-American people and Latino people and prior to me sitting down and writing this book 2 years ago all of these situations were already happening. In fact, the situations of people being executed by the police based on race—or based on injustice is only a big thing because the young generation doesn’t necessarily know the history of our presence here in the U.S. So it’s been very shocking, very awful.

It’s been an era of terror for young people who previously thought that this was a very liberal, very open, very democratic, very justice-oriented country—where people of all races had equal protection under the law, so they find it shocking. But for people who have been alive a bit longer or have studied the times of when they weren’t living—we have the names of people who have been executed by the police kind of etched in our memory—or in our souls, in our hearts.

For New Yorkers, we all know the name of Eleanor Bumpurs, the grandmother that got shot by the police with a shotgun. We all know the name of Michael Stewart, Yusuf Hawkins, of Amadou Diallo who simply put his hand in his pocket and got blown away in his doorway. We know the names of Michael Griffith from Howard Beach—all of these different race issues. Race assassinations. This is not shocking for us.

But the new era, the digital era has allowed people to capture these kinds of activities on film, on their cell phones. You know and it’s the evidence that older people never had when we were young. The evidence that older people never had when we were young but the condition and the circumstance was the same. And so we couldn’t get any conviction or any just conviction for the things that were happening to us in that era and now that we have it on film, we still can’t.”

Will this new book be adapted into a movie?

“Well The Coldest Winter Ever is presently under option. It has been optioned to become a film. And we have the full intent to make it an independently produced film that everybody in the world can enjoy.”

Do you have any tips for aspiring writers?

“If you want to be a great storyteller you have to live a rich life. Not rich in terms of money but rich in terms of experience. I think you have to be the type of person who is unafraid of life, who is unafraid of walking off your block, unafraid of exploring different people, different cultures, different languages, different places. I think that a storyteller can only give what he has to offer and if you don’t have anything to offer, then you won’t have anything to give.”

How can people contact you?

“You can find me at my official website HERE.. There you find out about my book tour. You can also follow me on Twitter at @souljahbooks.

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