Friday, March 8, 2013

Book Babblings



A Deeper Love Inside: The Porche Santiaga Story by Sister Souljah

The Nitty Gritty: This is being herald as the sequel to the Coldest Winter Ever. Which is is, but the way they are marketing it its almost as if its going to be starring Winter with her little sister Porche along for the ride. However this is is Porches story of her trials and tribulations after her father Ricky Santiaga is locked up and Porche is shuttled off into the system despite her best efforts to allude the authorities. 

In theory this is the story of what really happens after Winter's tale, but I look at it as a parallel story. While Porche is locked up Winter is out galavanting as if she didn't have a care in the world. 


What's The 411: If I had wanted to sit through a sermon I would have gone to church and I am sure I would have enjoyed the experience better. Sister Souljah has fallen for the trap that many celebrities and the like fall victim too. She had begun to believe her own hype. 

She is under the delusion that is is the savior if black people and this book seems to be her attempt at living up to that ideal. But I am here to let Sister Souljah know that organic foods and vaccines aren't going to help the African American community and neither is this book. 

When I read Coldest Winter Ever for the first time I fell under her spell. I was transported into the gritty life of Winter and I loved it. Then I happened to listen to a lecture by Bell Hooks. She explained that as black people and as black women we must look at everything the media produces and look at it critically. We can't just sit back and allow a world that we aren;t apart of spoon feed us our own identity without saying something. 

So I went back and read the Coldest Winter Ever and I was startled with what I found about that book and more importantly Sister Souljah. Now I won't get into the CWE because this is about A Deeper Love Inside. Which I felt wasn't as bad as CWE but it was certainly trying. 

The book starts off with Porche's love affair with her family who are gods in her eyes that can do no wrong. S.S tried extremely hard to work Winter into this book to draw in her readers without actually having her in the beginning of the book. Its a personally pet peeve of mine when authors do that. Its not really a bait and switch its more like "I need Winter in this book to get you to read it," and I don't like that. I'm not a idiot that needs to be drawn in my the lure of more vulgarity from Winter Santiaga to read the book. I was more intrigued by hearing Porche's story than I was about learning more about Winter. I had enough of her in her own book. 

Porche wasn't as lucky as her sister and she was shuffled into the system. S.S critical view of the prison system and its workers come across clear as a sledge hammer to the head. While I do agree that the DOC is slanted against minorities I don't think its face to categorize everyone who works in the system as vile, nameless thugs who take the job to torture little girls. Her characterization of the warden and the guards pissed me off. Now I don't believe that everyone is an angle, but I also do not believe that prison guards are horrible human beings.  

Now this is where we have to suspend disbelief a little bit. Porche at the beginning of this book is a ten year old girl that pees on herself at the drop of a hat, but yet we are supposed to believe that she is a young hustler just looking for her come up. Within a few months of being locked up she managed to pull together a crew, work an angle and get the respect of her fellow prisoners. Well that one's that are trying to kill her because she is just so beautiful and they are oh so jealous of her. 

Her scathing review of the behavior and attitude of black women comes through loud and clear. 

Porche is also adult enough to stab a case worker in the neck with a pencil for as she claims "running her mouth about her family." As if the Santiaga family is above reproach. 

We are also introduced to Suri. Who is Porche's best friend and her anchor to reality. Only later do we find out that this character is just a figment of Porche's imagination. Nothing out of the realm of reality from a child. We expect children who have been through a trama to react that way. What we don't expect is for the people around the child to see what is going on and do nothing about it. 

Sister Souljah gives Porche a parade of mental illnesses and never addresses any of them. None of the other characters mention them either. Its almost like she uses mental illness as a plot device, but then never mentions them. She makes a point to cram the organic lifestyle down our throats at every turn of the page, but we never hear her thoughts on the mental health system. 

Sister Souljah is aware of how powerful words can be. She started out life as a hip hop artist before she moved into the realm of fiction. So she should be taken to task for simply overlooking something just to move her story along. Its sloppy writing. Especially for someone who is claiming she is trying to uplift her people. 


The Good: There is very little that I can find good about this book to be frank. I only read the entire thing because it was a book of the month for a book club I was in and there were some heated debates going on and I never miss a chance for a good debate.

Though I will say that Porche seemed to thrive in all the areas that her sister failed in. Where Winter auctioned off her vagina to the highest paid bidder Porche protected her with a daily ritual of smelling herself to see if someone had touched her. A gross past time for any child I am sure. When Winter walks away from her mother Porche fights everything and everyone to pull her mother out of her addiction. While Winter fails to find a lasting source of money Porche falls in love with a boy destined to be a moneymaker from jump street. While Winter wheels and deals people like disposable tampons Proche manages to make lasting friendships and even learns a thing or two about a thing or two from people. 

The Bad: This book fails to deliver on all fronts. We don't get a coming of age story. We got a grown woman in a little girl's body. We don't get a proper catch up with the characters from Coldest Winter (if that was what you were looking for). The get honorable mentions to whet out appetites  We don't get a realistic slice of life story either because Porche just isn't a realistic character and nothing that happened in her life is at all realistic. Don't get me wrong I love fantasy books and Harry Potter is one of my favorite stories, but J.K never claimed that she was trying to portray real life.  

The book is extremely wordy and long winded. Almost as if Souljah had a word count she had to hit before they would publish it. I figure 200 pages of writing could have been cut out of this book and it still would have been an ok story.

Souljah seemed to have an internal battle with Proche in this book. On one hand she tried to keep the hard, street edge that we loved Winter for, but on the flip side she wanted to make Porche her own, unique character. What we are left with is a little girl with spilt personalities that would have left Sybil confused. 

My Final Say: Don't think I will be buying this book at all. I am so over the Santiaga family and I doubt I would even go see the Coldest Winter Ever even if they managed to get the movie made. One trek through the ghetto was enough for me. 

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