I’m purely glad people are reading more these days, and if it takes Harry Potter or “street lit” or whatever to get people to turn off the TV and actually read words off a page and use their imaginations, well then god bless street lit.

If you are going to do any sort of Lit, whether it’s Traditional or “Street” make sure you do it WELL. I like quality to my trash, and Goines was the master of that. His books grabbed you by the tits and completely immersed you into the world he wrote about, head-first. Most of the “Street lit books” are either weak imitations or out-right rip-offs of his work, It’s kinda how when “Bridget Jones Diary” became such a success and all of a sudden half of the female population in Europe thought they could write a book. Major problem being that few of them could do it WELL and in such a memorable fashion that you actually liked the characters and you would pick up a book by that author in the future.

This sounds like a Marsalis brother griping about how Fiddy Cent gets so much more love than an accomplished musician like himself…

Well, he may have a point - but when your market prefers shallow lowbrow fare and lacks sophisticated appreciation, go call a waaaaaahhhmbulance! That’s just how American youth are - drawn to the most superficial, lowest common social denominator - aka “pop culture.”

Here’s the problem I see: Terry McMillan and Maya Angelou are radically different genres and are studied in “mainstream” high school and college classes - why are they in an “African American” section?

African-American or Afro-centric studies should surely have their own section (like any other major ethnic or historical section).

Give me my local library, where they lump the romance/trashy paperbacks all together, and the literature in another, and the poetry in another.