New York Times best-selling author Sister Souljah pens her fifth novel, A Moment of Silence MIDNIGHT III. A Moment of Silence is the third installment in the series of novels revolving around the character “Midnight,” a young Sudanese man dealing with a number of adventures in Brooklyn.
Here’s what readers can look forward to: Handsome and young, Muslim and married to two women living in one house along with his mother Umma and sister Naja, can Midnight manage? He is surrounded by Americans who don’t share or understand his faith or culture and adults who are offended by his maturity, intelligence as well as his natural ability to make his hard work turn into real money.
Calm, confident and cool, Ninja-trained and powerful, one moment of rage throws this Brooklyn youth into a dark world of dirty police, gangs, guns, drugs, prisons and prisoners. Everything he ever believed, every dollar he ever earned and all of the women he ever loved, including his mother, are at risk. Will his manhood be taken, broken or altered? Can he maintain his faith among the heathens? Outnumbered, overruled, and deeply envied, how could he possibly survive? Will the streets convert him? What can he keep? What must he lose?
A heart-pounding adventure, thriller and intense narrative, Sister Souljah has penned her most passionate and engrossing novel to date. Raw and uncompromising, her storytelling highlights and ignites the ongoing struggle of young men worldwide to not only survive, but to live strong, to earn, to have the right to love and protect their families, receive justice and to be free.
Read what she has to say.
Why is this story about Midnight important to share at a time when Black men are being murdered by cops and in the wake of Black Lives Matter?
I don’t write in reaction. I have been weaving together stories ever since I wrote The Coldest Winter Ever. Midnight was the obsession of Winter Santiaga. More than that, he became a powerful and compelling and completely unique character in all of western literature that has ever been written by any author of any race. So I have been telling his story volume by volume. Even though my new novel, A Moment Of Silence MIDNIGHT III, is the third novel with Midnight as the main character, each book is a stand alone completed story of at least 500 pages. So readers can read them in any order that they choose, and will certainly not feel cheated. Each MIDNIGHT book is a full meal. The horrific execution of people by the police, based on race, racial fears, racial assumptions, and a false sense of unlimited authority rooted in racism, is ongoing. It has always been here. It was extreme in the ’80s. It is full on in the 21st century. No matter what group of activists gather together, whether it was the Black Panther Party in the ’60s or the No Justice No Peace movement of the ’80s or Black Lives Matter of 2015 – the issues remain the same.
The crimes remain horrifying, sad, violent and wicked. The justice system remains unjust. And so we learn a lesson about the nature of power. The truth of institutional racism and the verification that even when the USA has an African American president, he does not have the power to protect innocent African American people, professionals, tax payers, women and children from being lynched.
What was the hardest part, if anything, of completing this project?
A Moment Of Silence MIDNIGHT III is the novel where the character MIDNIGHT goes through the most changes in his life. He encounters very close up the police, prison, drugs, sex, gangs. He was always surrounded by it since he grew up in the Brooklyn projects after his family relocated there from Sudan. However, it had never really affected or involved him before. Now it does. So it’s difficult feeling the pressure that the character felt as I wrote. It was hard moving my pen into some dark places, where some foul people seemed to rule it all. It was stressful knowing that everything that my character was facing is the actual true and exact reality for too large of a portion of our people wherever we live and work in the world.
Please provide three “good to know” facts about you. Be creative. Tell us about your first job or the inspiration behind your writing.
1) I love films. Even when I lived in the projects in the Bronx I went to a movie theater called the Interboro Theater every Sunday and watched a movie. Usually, I saw two. Back then the “double feature” was regular. A movie theater ticket cost 75 cents, no bullshit. I still love films, but I prefer foreign films in the actual languages of the people and characters featured.
2) My favorite treats are potato chips, popcorn and chocolate. Since I have eaten so much of all three, I can no longer enjoy it with any regularity. That’s what happens when you overdo anything in this life. You lose it.
3) My imagination is so endless that I enjoy life to the fullest even when I am alone. My mind is constantly thinking or weaving stories together, or critiquing and breaking things down or analyzing and synthesizing information, people, places, habits, characteristics and so on. It is so serious that I don’t actually have to touch or interact to feel. My soul can experience you without you ever giving me the time of day or your permission.
What is the mission you set out to accomplish with your voice in this book?
With every book I write, fiction or non-fiction, the mission is the same: to write and share words that stir emotions, and stimulate your mind, and increase our understanding, and inspire your spirit and move your soul powerfully. I want to write stories that will never be forgotten, that will paint pictures in your memory, make you fall in love. Stories that will change lives for the better dramatically, and stories that will cause every soul to humble itself to the Maker of all our souls.
What book(s) are you currently reading? Why this author?
In 2015, I read Mike Tyson’s autobiography. It was phenomenal. He had a writer help him. But his voice was raw, honest, and so incredibly real, I could tell that Mike wrote that book aloud, if you know what I mean. I love reading nonfiction, real life stories of people, movements, events that impacted our culture or world history and changed the world for the better or worse.
A great book has what?
Depth
You develop characters and ideas by …
Living my life to the fullest with my heart, soul, mind, ears and eyes wide open. By traveling the world and keeping my self down to Earth. Head up when I’m walking. Head bowed when I’m making my prayers.
