the first time i read this book i started reading it around midnight...and hell if i didnt go to sleep until i finished reading it. it was about 6 in the a.m. and i was feeling satisfied but kind of angry.
sistah souljah may have been meaning to do well, but i seriously think a lot of women took that book as truth on how things are and didnt catch the irony and the sadness in winter's whole reaction to her father being put in jail. see, winter kept up the allusion that she was still "in the money"...when all she could do was keep from selling everything she had for some food.
i had a "discussion" with my Sun about this book...we both read it and he agreed that we know people just like winter; girls who would give anything for a man with money or girls who believed that money was the answer to everything.
i know a lot of women read that book and see winter as a strong female character - but winter is the weakest out of them all, even her mother. because she was the one who got out of things without a scrape and didnt give two craps about everybody else, they werent in her world. the only people she was concerned with was her physical and her future husband's money clip.
midnight was believable in a way...he existed only to show us who winter fantasized about and why she could never survive on her own. He was there to show us what winter's faults were. her constant materialsim...needing to appear as if she still had money, needing to appear as if she had everything together and refusing to come to grips with the fact that she needed halp and needed to give up "the good life", all those things led to her death (mentally). in my opinion, winter was the real crackhead...addicted to the fantasy that money is worth something. one thing people need to realize is that money is only a tool, never a valued thing. valuable things are things which connect to ur soul and improve your SELF. money is only as "valuable" as people allow it to be and some people place their life as collateral....
winter's father, in her eyes and her mother's, was a hero only because he provided them with their drug. they knew nothing of what he did outside of the house and probably didnt care. i was not surprised at all that he had a son from another woman.
the only surprise i got was that winter, to the end, defended her money fix and NEVER admitted to herself that there was any other way to be.
her last relationship was the "bottom" that so many former addicts talk about. the final straw that breaks the camels back. she had finally done anything to be with someone who had money, even becoming her mother. she knew people were not stupid, yet still disillusioned herself to believe that she could outsmart men who's job it was to deceive.
i didnt read souljah's previous book, but i feel that this may have been souljah at one time, OR that someone close to her was or is an addict of some kind. or maybe she just got inspired by a letter, who knows.

peace.