Author/rapper/activist Sister Souljah has completed “Midnight and the Meaning of Love,” the follow-up to her critically acclaimed best-seller, The Coldest Winter Ever.
The latest installment from Sister Souljah is the third book the series of books.
The first installment was “The Coldest Winter Ever,” which was originally released in 1999 and has sold over a million copies.
Sister Souljah’s last release was 2008’s “Midnight, A Gangster Love Story,” which was the prequel to “The Coldest Winter Ever.”
“Midnight and the Meaning of Love” is set in Japan, Brooklyn and Korea.
The hefty novel is told from the point of the view of the African-born, devout Muslim, street-savvy protagonist from whom it is titled. It picks up where the last book left off: Midnight heads to Japan to get his 16-year-old Asian wife, Akemi, after her father took her back to their native land with no warning. He must travel across three countries and numerous cultures in his attempt to defeat his opponent.
Along his life-affirming sojourn, Midnight meets people who change him forever, even as he changes them. Encountering temptations and taking risks is par for course in his quest to get the woman he loves back.
Of the beloved character, Souljah said:
“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be something to speak in a male voice?’ And wouldn’t it be something else to speak in an Islamic voice? Once I realized I had to go deep into my imagination and that the manhood had to stay in the tone and that I couldn’t slip into a Souljah or feminine voice, I got excited about it. As I writer you have to be excited about what you’re writing about. If you’re not excited, you can’t excite the reader.”
“I wrote ‘The Coldest Winter Ever’ as a complete work,” she clarified. “If I were to do a sequel, let’s look at the story: At the end of the book, Winter went to jail and was sentenced to 15 years. When Winter comes out of prison at 33, will her story still be hot? Would she have the same confidence? Her mom is dead; her father is doing life. These are real things that happened. She doesn’t have the same resources. Do you really hold the same position when you’re 33? Can you talk all of that s— you talked when you were a teenager? No! So what makes that so hot?
“I loved ‘The Coldest Winter Ever’; I would be a fool not to love it,” she continued. “I wrote it. I imagined it. I put it into circulation. But I wrote it in a complete form – a beginning, middle and an end.”
Rep’s for Sister Souljah told AllHipHop that she lived in Japan for three years while researching her new book.
Sister Souljah is a graduate of Rutgers University, where she earned a degree in American History and African Studies.
She also attended the Cornell University Advanced Placement Studies, and studied abroad in Europe at the University of Salamanca.
She recently returned home from Zimbabwe, were she was working in a medical center with refugee children in Mozambique.
As a recording artist, Sister Souljah was featured on several tracks from Public Enemy with Chuck D and Flava Flav and became of the member of the group in 1992.
A proposed film version of the movie – optioned years ago by actress Jada Pinkett Smith – is still in limbo, but Souljah is readying a follow-up to the beloved tome after she finishes touring with ‘Meaning of Love.’
Sister Souljah’s new book “Midnight and the Meaning of Love” is due in stores on April 12th, via Atria Books/Simon & Schuster. -AllHipHop