Young Adult Literature: Urban

Titles Discussed

Homeboyz by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

The Fight by L. Divine

Dope Sick by Walter Dean Myers

Genre Overview

Urban literature is also known as ghetto fiction, street lit, street fiction, and hip-hop fiction. Urban literature depicts life on the streets and includes themes such as crime, drug use, and gang involvement and contains references to hip-hop and its subgenre, gangsta rap. Young adult urban literature features the lives of young, primarily Black men and women living and learning to thrive in spite of their environment and circumstances.

Laura Ryan for the Seattle Times gives a brief history of the origins of urban literature in her article “Hip-hop Fiction Drawing More Readers to Black Lit.” She states that the roots of urban literature began in the 1920s and 1930s with the Harlem Renaissance, continued through the Black Arts movement in the 1970s, and is an integral part of the new Black Renaissance of the twenty-first century.

Popular urban fiction writer Donald Goines (1936–74) is known as one of the founders of the street novel and published more than ten books in four years, including Black Gangster in 1972. Lisa Williamson (b. 1964), commonly known as Sister Souljah, continued to make the genre popular into the twenty-first century when she published her debut novel, The Coldest Winter Ever (1999), the first of the Winter Santiaga series, which also includes the New York Times bestseller Life After Death (2022) and Love After Midnight (2024). Despite being separated by several decades, Black Gangster and The Coldest Winter Ever both deal with the harsh realities of life on the streets and include characters involved with crime and drugs. Urban literature is based on authenticity and often on the writer's own life experiences. It is primarily semiautobiographical.

Urban literature did not become mainstream until the early 2000s, despite its popularity among Black youth. Prior to that, many writers wrote for themselves, self-published their books independently, and then sold the books out of trunks of cars, street carts, and small convenience stores. The Coldest Winter Ever was one of the first urban books to be chosen by a major publisher and was one of the biggest sellers in the genre during the early 2000s.

Young adult urban literature is a quickly growing genre, but librarians are often leery about putting street-lit books on library shelves. The books contain themes many feel are inappropriate for teens, and there are concerns that the themes of drug use, prostitution, and criminal activity are romanticized. Writers of urban literature often choose to forgo conventional grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and some educators and critics feel the books read more like early drafts of novels rather than finished works. Despite these concerns, librarians admit that urban literature is bringing in many new readers.

At first, one might view Alan Lawrence Sitomer's Homeboyz, the third in Sitomer's Hoopster trilogy, as promoting gangs and the gang lifestyle, but that notion is dispelled as the reader follows Teddy's journey to avenge the murder of his little sister. Dope Sick by Walter Dean Myers portrays the harsh and disturbing effects and consequences of heroin addiction and the criminal lifestyle that so often accompanies it, yet the book also shows readers the value of second chances. The Fight by L. Divine is a lighthearted take on teenage urban life and depicts a young Jayd Jackson from the Los Angeles neighborhood of Compton and her drama-filled high school exploits.

Works

L. Divine's The Fight is the first book in the Drama High series, which follows the life of Jayd Jackson, a teenage girl from Compton who travels a great distance each day in order to attend high school in a wealthy section of Los Angeles. Jayd lives with her grandparents, whom she calls Mama and Daddy, and stays with her mother on weekends. The series portrays life in gang-led city neighborhoods and juxtaposes those neighborhoods with the suburbs and suburban schools.

As with all the books in the series, The Fight depicts the daily dangers in Jayd's neighborhood, such as when Jayd witnesses a fatal drive-by shooting on her way to buy snacks. Jayd is only momentarily affected by the shooting, however, and is soon more concerned that her boyfriend KJ will break up with her. Critics have compared Drama High to the 1983–2003 Sweet Valley High series by Francine Pascal that features the high school exploits of blonde twin girls. While that series was popular, today's youth crave protagonists who are more universal and relatable.

Despite the neighborhood that Jayd lives in, she values family and education over the gang lifestyle. She is a teen and, therefore, spends a lot of time focusing on boys, but she also does her homework, gets good grades, and abstains from alcohol, drugs, and casual sex.

The Fight brings mystical elements into play despite Divine's use of a real-world setting. Jayd's grandmother is called “Voodoo Queen,” and she teaches Jayd spiritual work. The grandmother is also a Christian, and she often prays with her rosary beads and reads the Bible. Jayd keeps these aspects of herself separate from her friends and does not discuss her spiritual homework outside of her family.

Dope Sick by Walter Dean Myers also includes fantasy and spiritual elements and follows the present and past of a young man named Jeremy Dance, who goes by the street name Lil J. The book opens with Lil J running from the police and trying to hide in an abandoned building. On his way up to the building's roof, he comes upon a man sitting in a chair watching television. Lil J and the reader soon realize that the man is watching what is happening outside the building as well as Lil J trying to get to the roof.

This television shows the past, present, and future and is used to help Lil J find the moment in time that he could change in order to get him out of his current predicament. The reader learns that Lil J is experiencing the effects of heroin withdrawal, which is also referred to as being dope sick. The scenes from his past show how he first began getting involved with gangs and criminal activity, as well as his failed relationship with his girlfriend and their son.

The man in the chair persuades Lil J to be more honest about his addiction and take responsibility for his actions. This man is a Jesus-like figure seeking to save Lil J from jail or a premature death by suicide, overdose, or at the hands of the police. At the end of the novel, the man sacrifices himself to save Lil J and to give him a second chance at a better life.

Lil J is saved by the end of the book despite not having chosen a past moment he would have changed. The message is clear, however, that although Lil J is saved in the short term from the police and death, it is up to him in the long run to save himself and restore a life for himself. Lil J seems to realize this, and it appears to be his hope that he will be able to turn his back on drugs and crime, find a job, and begin to rebuild a life for himself and his family.

Dope Sick is successful at deglamorizing the gangster lifestyle. Drugs do not make Lil J superhuman, and his life is not enviable. He uses drugs to escape his memories and his troubles and to allow him to continue the path of crime. Lil J reasons that his drug use is not bad because as long as he does not take as many drugs as the next person, then he does not have a problem.

Rather than describe the symptoms and effects of painful opiate withdrawal, Myers describes those who are dope sick as being not only physically ill but also stupid, irrational, and even violent. Myers shows that running from the police is not exciting or glamorous or heroic but terrifying. Lil J is not strong and brave. He is scared, hurt, and tired. He constantly wishes he could have a normal life with a simple home, but the never-ending cycle of crime and addiction seems inescapable.

Homeboyz is the third book in Alan Lawrence Sitomer's Hoopster trilogy and shows the consequences of crime. Teddy is a young Black man unaffiliated with any gangs, which is noteworthy considering that he lives in the middle of warring gang zones. When Teddy's younger sister is killed in a drive-by shooting, he makes it his mission to avenge her death.

Sitomer uses Teddy to explain the basic rules of gang life and to show how easy it is for underprivileged kids to fall into a criminal lifestyle due to a lack of good education and role models. Teddy ends up becoming a role model for a “high-risk” kid named Micah as part of his probation. Despite Micah's young age, he already has a lengthy criminal record. Eventually, the two bond over food and family, but everything changes when Micah reveals he knows the truth behind who killed Teddy's sister.

Teddy must decide if he wants to throw his, and Micah's, life away in the name of revenge, but in the end, Teddy arranges it, so the guilty party is arrested. The novel does not end with Teddy choosing to put his trust and faith in the justice system. Instead, Teddy, who is extremely bright and has advanced computer skills, hacks into the jail's database and arranges for the man responsible for his sister's death to be placed in a cell with rival gang members. The man is quickly killed by the inmates, and Teddy moves on with his life, and his parents take Micah in.

While Homeboyz is a cautionary tale, it does romanticize the desire for vengeance, and the novel's message is one of “Don't get caught.” Teddy may be a criminal, if not a gangster, but there is hope that Micah will choose to live a better and more peaceful life. Furthermore, Sitomer appears to put much of the blame for Teddy's choices onto corrupt school and justice systems. Kids are not born bad, Sitomer seems to say, but often, the hard life is chosen when there are few other options available.

Conclusions

Urban literature holds value for young readers in its relevance and themes. In his article “The Value of Young Adult Literature” (2008), Michael Cart states that “young adult literature is made valuable not only by its artistry but also by its relevance to the lives of its readers. By addressing not only their needs but also their interests, the literature becomes a powerful inducement for them to read.” Urban literature creates new readers because it reaches out and relates to an audience whose experiences and lives have been historically excluded from literature. Cart states that literature for young adults needs “to offer readers an opportunity to see themselves reflected in its pages.” He also believes that it is important for readers to read about lives unlike their own. This then discourages feelings of “us” and “them” and helps to join different people and cultures together.

Amy Pattee, professor and author of children's and young adult literature, believes that street literature “walks a fine line between social criticism and profanity.” It is most likely this fine distinction that makes urban literature hard to place in libraries. In 2006, Calvin Reid, an author and editor at Publishers Weekly, stated that many librarians felt uncomfortable purchasing urban literature because they were unfamiliar with the genre as a whole and the lack of reliable reviews in general.

Urban works from authors like Emlen, Grenke, Lassen, and Raffensberger showed that librarians were becoming more comfortable buying urban literature in the early 2000s but were unsure of where to place it. The authors believed that the biggest problem for marketing the genre was that it was not easy to find these novels within the library's stacks: Many young adult titles were placed in the adult sections, and others were in a separate section unto themselves. However, more libraries began including respectable quantities of urban titles within their collection and began bringing in more readers by doing so.

Despite the genre's early history of self-publication, more urban fiction titles began getting optioned by mainstream and highly respectable publishers, and the more titles that were marketed and released, the larger the audience may grow. Organizations like the Freedom to Read Foundation, the Urban Libraries Council, the American Library Association, and the African American Literature Book Club have all contributed to the increased popularity, publication, and access of urban literature for young adults in the twenty-first century.

In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, the genre's growth continued and authors continued expanding the genre’s boundaries, increasingly including urban Latino fiction novels like Jerry A. Rodriguez's The Devil's Mambo (2007) and nonfiction works inspired by the lives of popular hip hop artists and other important individuals who advocated for individuals of typically marginalized groups, such as Janell Pearson's For the Strength of Harlem-Plĕas Tusant Pearson (2023), a memoir about Mr. Plĕas Tusant Pearson. Additionally, works included various themes of city life, such as industrialization and cosmopolitanism, expanding the narrow scope of the genre's early works. Many popular young adult urban works became series in the 2010s and 2020s—for example, Darius Myer's Black Camelot series, including The Publisher's Dilemma: A Big City Tale of Privilege, Power and Murder (2019), Black Camelot's Dawn & The Return of Madame Hot Temper (2020), Black Camelot's Days of War (2021), and Black Camelot's Dazed by Death (2022).

Bibliography

Cart, Michael. “The Value of Young Adult Literature.” Chicago, YALSA American Library Association, Jan. 2008, . Accessed 5 Sept. 2024.

Emlen, Nina, et al. “What Librarians Say about Street Lit.” School Library Journal, 4 Feb. 2009. Accessed 5 Sept. 2024.

Irvin, Vanessa. The Readers' Advisory Guide to Street Literature. Chicago, American Library Association, 2011.

Myers, Walter Dean. “Dope Sick.” Kirkus Reviews, 20 May 2010, . Accessed 5 Sept. 2024.

Patrick, Diane. “Urban Fiction.” Publishers Weekly, 19 May 2003www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20030519/24060-urban-fiction.html. Accessed 5 Sept. 2024.

Pattee, Amy. Developing Library Collections for Today’s Young Adults: Ensuring Inclusion and Access. 2nd ed., Lanham, Scarecrow, 2020.

Pattee, Amy. “Street Fight: Welcome to the World of Urban Lit.” School Library Journal, 1 July 2008. www.slj.com/story/street-fight-welcome-to-the-world-of-urban-lit. Accessed 5 Sept. 2024.

Ryan, Laura T. “Hip-hop Fiction Drawing More Readers to Black Lit.” Seattle Times, 22 Feb. 2005.

Sitomer, Alan Lawrence. “Homeboyz.” Kirkus Reviews, 20 May 2010, Accessed 5 Sept. 2024.

Wright, David. “Streetwise Urban Fiction.” Library Journal. Lifestyle Theme on Genesis Framework, 15 July 2006, .