One of the things that my aunt asked me when she read the book was, "Why all the cussing?" To understand the question, you have to know that my aunt is from the "Old School". Profanity was never tolerated in her home and barely tolerated in mine. As she got older, she drew away from the secular world and began replacing it with God and His precepts. Not saying that she did this perfectly, but she did it well enough. I had to explain to her that writing a story without profanity is easy depending upon the genre that you select. But what if your genre is Urban Fiction or Street Lit? Both of those genre's subscribe to the darker side of urban life. Technically, if a story involves drugs, violence, sex or baby-mama-drama, then it's typically cast as Urban Fiction. And if the elements of the story are told in a grittier format, including language, descriptive s and content, then it's Street Lit.
Personally, I never really liked reading Street Lit although admittedly, I've read some Street Lit stories that gripped my attention. It wasn't until the stories started to blur together and the characters became the same that I began to take a step away from it. I am very much aware of what's out there. I know that there are people in our society that are materialistic to a fault...so materialistic that they will and often do sacrifice their humanity for what they long to own. We know that there are men that will do anything to make money...quick money. They will sell out themselves, their families and their communities in order to have a hunk of it. We all know that violence exists in all facets of life; from the very rich to the very poor. Just watch the news on any given night and you'll see what I'm talking about. So with all that being said, why did I pick Urban Fiction as my genre?
The answer is, I didn't. I picked three main characters that were as different as night and day and chose to knit a story around them. You can't have anyone in a drug culture and not talk about that culture. You can't have anyone that is of the LGBT community in a story and not talk about that community. However, the moment that you begin to address issues that are in the drug culture, your story becomes Urban Fiction...at least that's how I see it. I can be wrong, and I am sure that there are many definitions of Urban Fiction out there, but this is what it means to me. I'm just sharing with you what my thoughts are on the subject matter.
I've always thought that the LGBT community tells a story unlike any other community. There are things that people that are not of the community don't understand. Some close a blind eye to it because what happens within that community doesn't necessarily pertain to them. They give it no more thought than they would a bothersome fly on a hot summer day.
Still, I would like to think that I didn't choose Urban Fiction. I think that Urban Fiction chose me. And once it did, it became my job to make these characters as realistic as possible. One of the main issues in this book is the breakdown of the family unit as we know it. The older characters starting with the mother, Thandi is all about her faith...her faith and her family. They clearly come first. She spends a great deal of time protecting her youngest son, even if she may suspect that he's not doing right. She agonizes over the role she played as a mother, and several times within the pages of "Bruthas", she has to be reminded that she did the best she could, and that at one point, she is going to have to let her children be the men that she groomed them to be. Thandi's brothers and sisters, Winnie, Isaac and Louis are prime examples of just how different people can be yet still subscribe to the ideology that family is everything. Some people may not share that thought, but it's there nevertheless.
So why Urban Fiction? Let's just say that in order to tell this particular story, I had to keep it real and say some things that needed to be said. And speaking of Urban Fiction, let's take a closer look at Nate.
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