Can Fiction Matter? Reflections on Street Lit
September 22, 2005

I take my title, of course, from NEA chair Dana Gioia's Can Poetry Matter?, an elegant defense of literature as an act of engagement. But aside from the pleasure or insight rendered (for many of us enough), can a poem or novel really make a difference: change a life, stop a crime, start a revolution? Yes, I learned this summer when I intoduced "Street Lit," a FOLUSA panel at this year's ALA featuring Y. Blak Moore, Darren Coleman, Mister Mann Frisby, and K'Wan. Each of these men is a distinctive writer--there's always a danger in using labels like Street Lit, though in this case it has served admirably to draw in readers who might otherwise find books not terribly relevant. But along with a tendency toward frank and gritty subject matter and language, these authors share a truly infectious enthusiasm, an acknowledgment that reading made in difference in their young lives and that writing rescued their older selves from sometimes harrowing circumstances.
     A vivid anecdote from K'wan says it all: a young fan contacted him to say that had he not read K'wan's latest, with its sobering depiction of the consequences of street violence, the best friend he was contemplating killing would be dead and he himself would be in jail for murder. It's not every best seller that can make this kind of claim. So if you haven't read any Street Lit, try a title. I found Moore's Slipping one of the biggest eye-openers I've ever encountered--hard to read and hard not to read. Whether it evokes a world you know or discloses one you owe it to yourself to discover, a book like Slipping or K'wan's just-published Hoodlum does what liteature should do. It shows us that writing really matters--Barbara Hoffert

Posted by on September 22, 2005 | Comments (11)