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Research Paper

Research Paper

Shakina Morgan

Full Sail University

Sister Soulja is an individual that greatly inspires me because she embodies everything I associate myself with being in the near future, such as a community activist. Soulja organized against racially motivated crimes, police brutality, and the miseducation of the urban youth. She is most known for what they now call, “The Sister Soulja Moment,” which originated in 1992 during the President Bill Clinton campaign. Sister Soulja was a guest speaker at Reverend Jesse Jackson Rainbow Coalition event where she did an interview about the Rodney King case and was quoted as saying, “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”…her remarks were connected to a much longer response and in full context makes sense, but isolated subjected her to criticism. Clinton compared her to David Duke, the former politician, convicted felon and KKK Grand Wizard. Souljah stands by what she has said. “If you ask me my view, even if it’s not your view, you have to handle that,” she says. However, when an interviewer ask Soulja to explain ‘the sister soulja moment’ her reply was, “That’s when you meet a beautiful, powerful woman—and you just can’t forget her.’”

In 1995, because of her success and sincerity, Sister Soulja was selected by Sean P. Diddy Combs to become the Executive Director of his charitable organization, Daddy’s House Social Program where she built the program and created academic programs for a total of seven years. In the field of entertainment, Soulja was the young voice in New York radio that spoke to the hip hop audience about politics, culture, business, and social organizations. She was also a featured speaker in the Million Woman March. She’s also had appearances on Oprah Winfrey, Larry King and the cover of the Newsweek Magazine.

Today, Soulja is the author of five national best sellers. In 2007 she became a New York Times Best Selling author and has since charted in the top ten of the New York Times list three times over. Soulja wrote the Coldest Winter Ever, which went on to sell two million copies to date. Even in 2015 Soulja work still rings bells as it was mentioned on the hit show, “Orange is the new black,” not for her usual controversial moments, but to reference her work in the prison library.

She inspires me simply because she is realistic. She was born in the projects of New York and she grew up poor. She was indeed a product of her environment yet she didn’t become a statistic. I am from one of the most dangerous cities in America and according to the food chain I grew up poor as well, but it’s what we call now “middle class.” I had a child out of wedlock and being a minority didn’t help my story, yet I overcame that. It inspires me to see a young, black, woman be strong, be educated, have class and show strength in a room full of people who think that their educated enough to overpower you with a bunch of words that sound intelligent, but makes no sense, all because your black. I fell in love with the way she fights. The way she uses her platforms, outlets and celebrity status to educate young, black, misguided people. I mostly like the way she uses urban fiction to target her audience all the while putting one of the strongest messages inside of those words that makes you identify and think on a larger scale aside from “urban.”

Sister Soulja made me discover my talent and love for writing. She helped create a voice in me that I didn’t know I had at the tender age of 13. It is because of her that I want to pursue this dream that seem larger than life and almost impossible. I just want to be as fearless, respected and courageous as she is one day.

In my opinion, Sister Soulja found her creative task early on in her career. In her own words, she says, “Sister Soulja is a person who loves her people and everything that I do, I do with my people in mind.” According to (Greene 179), “The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self—our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds. To make a discovery, to invent something that connects with the public, to fashion a work of art that is meaningful, inevitably requires time and effort. This often entails years of experimentation, various setbacks and failures, and the need to maintain a high level of focus.” Sister Soulja recognized early on that she wanted to be apart of a dynamic movement. She recognized that the youth of African American had been greatly misguided. It became her passion and her goal to help aid in the process of educating young black America.

(Greene 180) stated, “It is often wise to choose something that appeals to your sense of unconventionality and calls up latent feelings of rebelliousness. Perhaps what you want to invent or discover is being ignored or ridiculed by others. Soulja did this by teaming up with one of the most controversial groups in hip hop, Public Enemy. She put out an album titled, “360 Degrees of Power” which she calls an amalgamation of all her thoughts, personal and professional experiences here in America. The album was produced by Eric Sadler, one of the producers who created music for Ice-Cube, another controversial artist. This was a great way for her to use her creative mind. What better way to evoke the thought of young black America than through rap lyrics. The community and audience that she was trying to reach would listen because she wasn’t a woman who was throwing her education around saying ‘listen to me because I have degrees.’ She was down to earth, she was from the ghetto and her passion was visibly sincere and this made her target audience pay attention to the important message. According to http://hiphopandpolitics.com, Soulja was also offered a job by Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, which is a church sponsored civil rights firm which she developed, organized and financed, through hip-hop music, a sleep away summer camp called the African Youth Survival Camp for children of homeless families and ran it successfully for 3 years. Soulja have spoken on the same platform with Jesse Jackson, Minister Louis Farrakkan, Rev. Ben Chavis, Rev. Calvin Butts and Nelson Mandela.

In using the creative mind, Soulja, in my opinion definitely has left her mark of creation. I believe this has a lot to do with her education intelligent. She is holding a BA in American History and African Studies. Also studying in Europe at the Univerisity of Salamance and has traveled to England, France, Spain, Portugal, Finland and Russia. I once heard Soulja speak about her teachings through According content in Mastery, (Green 180)

I relate The Creative Breakthrough process to Soulja because she’s unlike any other urban fiction writer. As much as her fans love her and anticipates her creation she makes us wait. When asked why it takes her years to finish a novel, I remember her response was that she makes her audience wait so they can retain the information given. It isn’t that she has forgotten about us or it isn’t done out of spite, but she wants to keep the same excitement, that hungry and that dedication going because she puts in additional work by studying for her individual characters. For instance, her character development for Midnight caused her to moved to Japan to study the culture of his love interest. Soulja states she wants her audience to grow with her characters mentally. She was quoted saying, “I write books because they are a great way to reach people in a moving and entertaining way.” I believe she creates, not only books, but literature and that is why she is so great in her craft. Green says, “If we remained as excited as we were in the beginning of our project, maintaining that intuitive feel that sparked it all, we would never be able to take the necessary distance to look at our work objectively and improve upon it.” I believe this is the point that Soulja was making.

In my opinion, the emotional pitfall that Soulja experienced was conservatism. Soulja work emerged when there was limited competition for her genre and also social media was non existence. Green states, “You become subtly addicted to the material comforts you have acquired and before you know it, you uphold ideas that you think you believe in, but that really are tied to your need to please the audience or your sponsors, or whomever.” This was to be true for Soulja because she wasn’t use to marketing her products by the way of the internet. When her novel, “Coldest Winter Ever,” was released, it was during an era when you could sell a copy out of the truck of your car and that be sufficient. Word of mouth was the best marketing plan back then. When Soulja released, Midnight, she noticed that her sales has not picked up at full speed because no one knew her new work was published. By getting into the social media phase of Twitter she quickly learned that 120 character was not the new word of mouth and she can reach six times the amount of people with one click of a button. It was number 7 on the New York Times Best Sellers list and has sold 1 million copies. Her first novel sold over two million to date and it was published in 1999. Soulja has to overcome Conservatism and realize the new way of things can be an enhancement.

If I had to associate Soulja with one of the people from the Creative Active phase, it would be Yoky Matsuoka. I believe there are similairties because both her women and both are perceived as, different. Matsuoka had a love for physics and mathematics, but then shifted to biology and she later enter in the program of robotics. Soulja started off as activist and ventured into rap for the benefit of being heard and changed her titled to “raptivist”. Just like Matsuoka story there was not too many women activist that spoke for the black American youth. So like Matsuoka, Soulja took a different approach and started working urban fiction literature to use as a education. She needed something that will not bore the youth and something that was relatable. So she used what they knew. Money, drugs, violence, police and tainted friendships to overcome the saying that black people don’t read. She went on to sell over two million copies. According to Green (p231), Your project or the problem you are solving should always be connected to something larger—a bigger question, an overarching idea, an inspiring goal.

(Greene 231) Greene, Robert. Mastery. Penguin Books, 11/2012. VitalBook file.

(Greene 203) Greene, Robert. Mastery. Penguin Books, 11/2012. VitalBook file.

(Greene 200) Greene, Robert. Mastery. Penguin Books, 11/2012. VitalBook file.

(Greene 180) Greene, Robert. Mastery. Penguin Books, 11/2012. VitalBook file.

(Greene 180)Greene, Robert. Mastery. Penguin Books, 11/2012. VitalBook file.

(Greene 179) Greene, Robert. Mastery. Penguin Books, 11/2012. VitalBook file.

(Greene 180)Greene, Robert. Mastery. Penguin Books, 11/2012. VitalBook file.

Marshall, E., Staples, J., & Gibson, S. (2009). Ghetto Fabulous: Reading Black Adolescent Femininity in Contemporary Urban Street Fiction. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(1), 28-36. 

Guerra, S. F. (2012). Using Urban Fiction to Engage At-Risk and Incarcerated Youths in Literacy Instruction. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(5), 385-394. doi:10.1002/JAAL.00047

http://www.sistersouljah.com/biography/

http://hiphopandpolitics.com/2012/06/13/20-years-ago-the-infamous-sister-souljah-moment-occured-we-look-back/

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