The hard, cold reality was that I needed more than the popularity of the welfare hotel, homeless kids issue. We needed money, big money to hire buses, rent the camp facility, pay the counselors, purchase the supplies, and a bunch of other important things.
A popular nighttime talk radio personality, Bob Law, introduced me to Bill Stephney, then the vice president of Def Jam Recordings. After a couple of meetings with him, we struck an agreement for him to allow his artists, LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C., and a host of others, to perform at the world famous Apollo Theater. They would donate their performances. I would control the ticket prices. I would pay the cost of renting the theater, the limos, the backstage amenities, security, and the upgraded sound system.
Truthfully, I had no idea what I was doing. I had never done this before. I had never even attended a real music concert before. But everybody had seen me in the five buroughs of New York with these kids who loved me because I was there every day, putting real heart, mind, and time in. People had seen me and the children together on the trains, in the parks, theaters, and museums. The realness made them want to help. Maybe also, the fact that I was willing to do what no one else was willing to do, with the population that no one in power wanted to acknowledge, address, or stand beside.
After learning incredible lessons, small but important details, business practices and requirements, I arrived at the week of the actual concert. The buzz on this event was unbelievable. So many popular artists had signed on to appear. LL Cool J was the headliner. Run-D.M.C. and Salt-N-Pepa dropped out, but Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions, Queen Latifah, and Rob Base had signed on. All together there were about ten major artists performing, the biggest hip-hop show ever in the history of the Apollo. I was able to raise the ticket prices to an unprecedented amount because of the demand, and because it was a charity event. I was amazed as the artists battled for more onstage performance minutes, when no one was being paid a cent.
On a security walk-through, I learned more than anyone could learn from a book. This was becoming both my business training ground and my street boot camp. I was instructed by the security team on how to deal with hustlers. That’s right. I was told that the drug dealers would be out in full force to my show. I was shown where they would sit, how they would act, and what they would require. I was told that they were friends and not enemies. Many of them were buying up entire rows. The box seats had sold at triple the regular price. It was important that certain ones be seen. It was important that I had a popular and appealing show host. It was important the dealers and their crew be acknowledged and respected. Quietly, I was shocked that the elderly man in charge of the security detail, as well as the appointed police officers, were in full awareness of and cooperation with the dealers.
I was told that the dealers were good for business. After all, they would buy the jewels for their girls from the merchants whose shops were located on 125th Street. They would buy their own gold and diamonds out of the 47th Street diamond district. Their dentists would mold new gold fronts and gap fillers. They would have their outfits custom made at Dapper Dan’s, a famous African tailor who had a shop on 125th Street. Everybody would purchase new kicks, fresh designer clothing. All of the beauty salons would be packed with girls needing fabulous same-day styles. There would be limos ordered, cars rented, upgraded, and exchanged. There would be new cars, pimped out and rimmed up. Even some Harlem crackheads who had formed an impromptu car-wash business would profit. The drug dealers clearly were big business for the shops owned by whites, blacks, Jews, and Asians. The money makers could not be any happier. The dealers were insiders. “Rabble rousers,” community organizers, and activists like myself, who challenged the system and who worked with the poor and powerless, were less acceptable to these businessmen, and made to feel much more uncomfortable than those who supplied the neighborhoods with the illegal drugs that had destroyed so many of us.
Preparing for the show, I learned bits and pieces of what to expect from Harlem, where I lived, versus what to expect from Brooklyn youth or the Bronx or Queens or Staten Island. After breaking through the initial shock that a twenty-one-year-old female was the promoter of the biggest hip-hop show ever, the regular street people, show people, and record industry insiders were toughening me up.
I had to own up to the idea that most of the political and conscious blacks knew me, but the street blacks and middlemen business types did not. The political ones knew me from my activism on behalf of our community. They had seen me on the political television shows and heard me on the political radio shows. They knew my intellectual toughness, cultural commitment, work ethic, and sharp tongue. The streets were just getting to know me. The middlemen in business were in awe and envy. They saw me as incoming competition that must either be coopted or crushed. It became clear that I needed to consider making some kind of alliance.
I hired the Fruit of Islam to do security for me. As far as I was concerned, at that time they were running things. They were an army of big, beautiful, strong black men respected by and respectful of the black community. The artists, the businessmen, the youth, and even the dealers would yield to them. They were under the direction of Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, who was on fire in the ’80s, and I knew that they respected me as well and would hold me down, making sure that everything was at peace, and everybody played their part correctly.
On the night of the show, no one was more excited than me. I had never seen so many beautiful young girls, decorated and adorned so perfectly. Their styles were so original, carefully crafted and alluring. They had outdone Hollywood, Fifth Avenue, and Paris. They stopped me in my tracks as I watched with my jaw dropped open. The cats were correct also. They had leathers and suedes, Gucci and Louis Vuitton prints, all arranged differently than how they were offered and sold in the department stores. The tailor had hooked it up just right. They looked better. They complemented the black physique and style superbly. They strolled into the theater slowly, mindful of being admired. Their heads were held high. They were surrounded by entourages, they were at least as famous as the rap stars on the stage.
When the curtain opened and the first act appeared the crowd went wild. I watched from backstage. I could see the audience head on. No one could have accurately described the love, enthusiasm, dedication, and complete obedience the artists received from this crowd unless they were actually there. I watched a thousand youth and young adults get up and recite every rhyme. They danced, screamed, cheered for whatever building, block, or borough they hailed from. They acknowledged the hustlers in the crowd and box seats. It was incredible.
That night we had two shows. We made all the money for the buses, the kids, the camp, the staff, and all the related fees. The homeless children were backstage in disbelief that the same artists whom they worshipped had paused to give something back to them. I was mindful that it was incredible that the hip-hop stars were all between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. I was twenty-one; the youth we were working with and for were six through sixteen. We had made a complete unified leap forward and we were all barely adults.
I never got swept away by the entertainment world. I remain, even today, close to the earth. I still run an annual summer camp for our youth. Now it is financed by Sean P. Diddy Combs. I don’t have to go out and make the money myself anymore. Over time, I have seen the young come under my guidance and direction and go from crack families to become chemical engineers, social workers, teachers, and doctors.
On the writer’s side, I developed a careful eye. I learned the difference between the young teenage male selling drugs hand to hand for basic survival and the men who had the box seats, the cars, trucks, jewels, homes, and riches. I learned the difference between one-hit wonders and huge hip-hop stars that go on to create empires. I know the difference in the way a man feels when he can earn and when he can’t. I know the difference between street girls and college girls and professional black women. I know the difference between friends and e
nemies, the used and the users. I know the difference between love and sex, between life and death, between incarceration and freedom. Every writer needs to know the difference between one thing and another. It is critical to creating, developing, and shaping characters who are so natural and so authentic that people read your work then go looking for them as if they really exist.
I went on to promote similar hip-hop events over a seven-year period. I went from drawing audiences of 1,000 to audiences of 30,000. I went from promoting shows with LL Cool J, Doug E. Fresh, Slick Rick, and Public Enemy, to promoting shows with Notorious B.I.G. and Lauryn Hill and the Fugees. They were all community shows with a conscious purpose. Many of the artists became aquaintances and friends. One business led to another. I became a real part of the black community on every level. I was no longer just an intellectual who could only read and speak about it and not be about it. I was now respected as someone who criticizes constructively, but also builds institutions, and organizations. I became known as someone who gathered alot and shared alot. I became known as a woman who was respected for her mind, thoughts, words, and actions, whose physical appearance was nice but not all up in your face.
The authenticity in The Coldest Winter Ever, the story line and characters, comes from having lived a real, full life. The richness comes from having walked and worked among and beside all kinds of people from the poorest, who may in fact have been the most colorful, to the mediocre and wealthy. There is a difference between writers who are impatient and writers who are patient. There is a difference between writers who live in front of a television or inside a movie theater and writers who live by doing, working, participating, talking, and observing. There is a difference between writers who live on one particular block, or in one particular place, and those who move all around the globe. There is a difference between writers who have read and studied the great writings of powerful writers who came before them, and those who have not. There is a difference between writers who have had the discipline to at some point sit still and study the craft of writing and those who have not. I would say to all up-and-coming writers that you need to first be willing to learn, to be observant and patient. You must also live life, build something, do something, develop something. It is the only way to sit down and create an authentic work with vivid descriptions and compelling characters. Capturing the truth of the human soul and experience and weaving it together like a fine tapestry is creating characters, voices, and scenes that will live forever.
4. Why did you decide to include yourself as a character in the novel The Coldest Winter Ever?
As an author, the first task you have is to make the reader care about your story. If you can create an emotion in the reader in the first paragraph, you can be certain that you got ’em. If you fail to create an emotion right away, you lose the reader.
At the time that I penned The Coldest Winter Ever, I knew I was both loved and hated by hundreds and thousands of people. When the main character in the story, Winter Santiaga, stated up front that she hated Sister Souljah, she created an instant emotion in the readers who knew and loved me. They would naturally be curious and defensive. They would feel something that would drag them right into the tale.
For the people who hated me, there would be a feeling of solidarity with Winter, and the great expectation that yes! Sister Souljah is about to be challenged and exposed. As a result, they would also be dragged into the story.
Besides, females competing and fighting is cheered on in American society. Many people love to read about it, witness it, and choose sides. For African women it is outright expected that we hate each other. It is known but not discussed that we have many conscious and subconscious problems with image, complexion, identity, culture, finance, love, community, and family.
Also, as a literary technique, I thought it was clever to have the protagonist, Winter Santiaga, and the antagonist, Sister Souljah, in reverse positions. After all, the protagonist is supposed to be not only the principle character, the protagonist is supposed to be the leader of a cause, the one whom the reader cheers for. The fact that the reader ends up cheering resoundingly for Winter, the drug dealer’s daughter; who uses, abuses, and manipulates people, is revealing and refreshing to me. Because, in America, it happens in real life. Those who are doing what we have traditionally accepted as being wrong, get the most attention. They are seen as the most cool, sensual, sexual, and acceptable. As the reader cheers for Winter no matter how deadly her behavior becomes in the story, I am hoping that the reader will pause and ask, What do I believe? What kind of person am I? What is right? What is wrong? What kind of woman would I like to be and/or become? Or, What kind of woman would I like to love? Or, What kind of daughter would I like to raise?
In the meantime, I am hopeful that as Sister Souljah the character, who attempts to do right in the world, becomes more and more of a nuisance in the story, it will cause readers to ask themselves why is it so common to reject and even hate the people who are helping in a real way to reverse the tide of evil? What do helpful/activist types of people really make you think and feel? Are their lives and their work a complete waste of time? Should they stop completely and get a “real” job? Or, is there some value in what they have dedicated themselves to? Is the actual truth that helpers and activists can only be loved after they’re dead? Or should the community consider their continuous contributions while they’re living, conscious, and available to be appreciated?
Overall, I knew by including myself in the story, I was giving readers a compass to find their way. I would have been wrong and guilt ridden to simply throw readers into Winter’s world without a way to navigate themselves toward what I perceive to be the truth. To do so would’ve been to create another piece that glorifies greed, and excuses violence, and leads young males and females astray.
5. When and where were you when you first started writing The Coldest Winter Ever?
Writing is a process. No one just sits down and lets it rip. In 1993 I started breastfeeding my son. The whole adventure of getting married, then giving birth to my child was the richest and most peaceful period of time in my life. It was also the most emotional time in my life. It was the most sensitive I had ever been. My thoughts became even deeper. It was the most isolated and secluded I have ever been, personally by choice, politically by design. Knowing that I had released into this world a new life made me feel even more responsible for improving cultural, economic, and social conditions. In other words, it was the best time to get writing. I felt if the twenty year olds didn’t write of love, work, life, war, and death, then the teens would not know about or be prepared to make better choices. If the thirty year olds did not write, then the twenty year olds would not know. If the forty year olds did not write, then the thirty year olds wouldn’t know what to expect and build toward, and so on. I started by scribbling notes on odd pieces of paper. While out buying things for our baby, I would pick up random notepads and jot down thoughts and ideas, then tuck them into my private library. I knew I wanted to be a part of stopping the cycle of stupidity in our community. I knew that to do so, I had to write something that kids and adults could take home and devour, learn from, and share, and pass on.
It’s funny. When you find peace in your personal life the word goes out. The simple discovery of it brings people from miles around to come take a look. They want to know is it possible? Is it real? Can it last? Can it happen in more than this one case? Two youths who came seeking my counsel in 1993 were the perfect examples of absolute black beauty, grace, and talent. Yet they were the examples also of social, cultural, and spiritual chaos. I was not able to be a mother to them. I was not old enough. However, I could be their older sister. I knew that sharing my experiences, observations, philosophies, and beliefs would help them at least to know what their options could and would be and what the consequences of their choices would feel and be like. I started to think about how I had received thousands of letters from youth wanting guidance, none of them famous
like Lauryn Hill and Tupac Shakur. Yet they all deserved it. Young people deserve hearing the truth from any wise and balanced adult. I knew that it was essential that I continue to create life-altering writings, fiction and nonfiction.
The bulk of The Coldest Winter Ever was written in Jamaica in 1995. I was still breast-feeding. (I did so for the first three years of my son’s life.) After successfully producing a concert for Lauryn and the Fugees, which 30,000 young black and Latino New Yorkers attended to watch the most famous artist in hip-hop worldwide perform and speak in a free outdoor concert in Harlem, N.Y., we flew to Jamaica. Because everyone on my producing team had worked so hard, I thought it would be cool to share the production fee and bring them. On what was my first trip to Jamaica, me, my husband, and son were accompanied by ten others.
The Waterhouse section of Kingston, Jamaica, is a straight up ghetto. My Jamaican-Panamanian husband had always made jokes about me being a Yankee girl from the projects. I was shocked standing in the huts his people called home. With very little food, and “no water at the moment,” his relatives who insisted that we stay with them and not in a hotel, escorted us to the bed where all ten of us were supposed to sleep. I looked around in complete amazement. My eyes shot toward my husband, the five female workers, the five male workers, and then fell onto my son. My husband smiled. We bounced to a resort.
After a comfortable sleep each night, I’d roam into the Jamaican streets and ghettoes. I watched grown men and women walking around outside wearing no shoes, while hungry goats mill about. I became sad. Despite having run around the world, I had never been to the islands. Over the years, however, I had met plenty of youth and famous music artists from Jamaica. They were all ten times more proud than anyone else. They were always the ones careful to big up the African culture. They were always the ones to encourage the natural, cherish the family. Bob Marley was their undisputed king.