Sister Souljah’s triumphant return to Toronto
By Fabien Alexis
Sister Souljah graced Toronto last Friday after nearly two decades away from Canada.
The vibrant activist said, “I had to exert a lot of pressure to get any date in Canada. Unfortunately, I’m normally told things like, I don’t have any readers in Canada or any of these foreign ‘territories’ and so I have to be very vigilant that yes, in fact I do.”
A packed auditorium awaits the arrival of writer and activist Sister Souljah.
Nearly 300 people attended the two-hour book launch held at Ontario Institute for Studies Education (OISE), for Sister Souljah’s fourth work Midnight and the Meaning of Love, originally released in November 2010.
The whopping 624-page novel is the continuation to Midnight: A Gangster Love Story, and centres on Midnight, the young Sudanese man living in Brooklyn with Akemi, his Japanese wife.
The Centre for Urban Schooling (CUS) and A Different Booklist partnered to bring Sister Souljah to Toronto.
“It was more of a synergy than a one-way kind of thing. I was insisting to my book company that I wanted to come to Canada and do several dates,” said Sister Souljah. “And at the same time I was getting tweets from twitter… So a lot of my Canadian fans were contacting me through twitter.”
Other notable sponsors included Literature for Life and Simon and Schuster, who were both acknowledged by A Different Booklist’s Itah Sadu.
Sadu opened the evening, followed by a spoken word performance by Toronto’s own Motion, followed by an in-depth introduction of the multifaceted Souljah.
CUS director of school services, Nicole West-Burns said, “when our close friend Itah Sadu asked us if we’d be interested in co-sponsoring this event, it made perfect sense. Sister Souljah is one representative of women, women of African descent, who has pushed boundaries, thinking, stood up against injustices, both locally and globally.”
The director concluded with an introduction of Sister Souljah: “I’m inspired by your presence and energy. It’s an energy that is positive, an energy that’s warm and centered, and it’s an energy that indicates a future for positivity and future for change.”
Sister Souljah was welcomed with thunderous applause and standing ovation.
The Q-and-A session began shortly afterwards, with Motion acting as the moderator. However, audience members were slightly reluctant to be the first on the mike.
Souljah prompted the audience saying “don’t be shy”.
Midnight and the Meaning of Love was a hot topic during the Q&A session with Sister Souljah.
Fifteen individuals eventually made their way to the mike, questioning Souljah about everything from tBlack love to her thoughts on Tyler Perry and Troy Davis.
“I hope to give that human feeling, that effect of presence,” explained the activist, “so I’m not just a voice or some pages off in the distance; to allow them to see me and me to see them. And for them to hear me and for me to hear them, and them to question me and me to try and respond sincerely and in a meaningful way.”
Souljah’s passion promoted an open and honest environment for discussion and growth. Her stage presence and genuine replies, were welcomed but also touched a nerve with women in the audience when she delved into “toxic love” in the Black community.
While the conversation did not centre entirely on Souljah’s latest work, an audience member did ask the burning question in most readers’ minds: why couldn’t Midnight find a Black woman? Why did Sister Souljah choose a Japanese girl?
Souljah’s reply was candid and thorough:
As most of you should know, I don’t run from any question. I chose the Japanese girl on purpose, because I perceive there to be a crisis in African womanhood. That crisis is ignited and compelled by a great deal of arrogance that makes many African women, at least in America, feel like that we’ve been thru so much that we don’t have to discuss anything, about something we may be doing correctly or could be doing better. What I was seeing was a population of African-American women, who blamed most of their problems on African-American men. And the relationships were all about the men they were with, and I’m sure that some of the causes came from the men that they were, we were with, but I’m sure that some of the problems also came from the women, their mentality, their approach and etc. And so I began to think about the topic of how women love, not just African am women, but women around the globe love. And what would happen if I had to take the volume out of the relationship. Meaning, there’s a lot of talking in the African am relationship. The woman is telling off the man, the man is telling off the woman, you know there’s a lot of painful words spoken between black men and women in the US of A. There’s a great deal of pressure going on in African love in America. Court orders, court restraints. People stealing their kids, women saying fathers can never see their kids unless they pay child support. The man is saying he paid some, but he couldn’t pay it all, he doesn’t have a job or he’s out of work, everybody’s working the system… and just a whole kind of very toxic love going on between African people in the US of A.
So, I took a culture of people that are known for their silence, and are known for their expressiveness in silence, and known to be able to communicate with each other without necessarily a lot of words, yelling, screaming. I thought it would be interesting to show how the character Midnight looked at the girls in his hood. You said, ‘could he not find any African woman in his country?’ Well he is like a regular guy that’s living in the neighbourhood. So he’s seeing what I saw or what you saw… and he’s coming from a very conservative Islamic background… he’s used to all women being covered in a particular way, and he sees the opposite… the lack of any kind of modesty. And the lack of any kind of focus on the issue of sex and sex in relation to marriage, and virginity. I knew that all of these were very explosive topics. But I also knew that they were topics needed to be discussed. If I just went along and gave you a very ordinary story, we as African women would just continue to ignore the explosion that’s happening right beneath our feet… I need to open up that kind of a dialogue I needed to reflect a mirror for African women to be able to see ourselves. Look at what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. And look at how these foreign girls can come swipe your man from right under you. Because they coming with the culture.”
Although Black women are the generally thought to be the main demographic for Sister Souljah’s works, the artist mentioned No Disrespect, her first work of non-fiction was “embraced by black men in prisons across the United States. It was a huge bestseller inside all of the prisons across the country in the USA. No Disrespect was introduced to a lot of African-American women from their men who were incarcerated.”
While Sister Souljah has not been to Toronto in almost two decades, she tours various colleges United States regularly giving speeches and gaining feedback from readers.
Souljah told Sway, “my intention was really to re-familiarize myself, and be able to talk to the audience and to let not only the average, everyday Canadian know, but also the bookstores and businesses know how to contact me so I won’t have that have that kind of interruption, or buffer zone that artists sometimes have when they only have contacts through their corporate company.”
As promised, Sister Souljah stayed after the discussion for autographs. Due to the overwhelming demand, the facilitators moved the crowd outside of the auditorium after 9:30 p.m. The New York native remained with her fans until after 11 p.m. despite the event’s scheduled finish almost two hours earlier.
“I don’t leave my engagements until they are completed, unless it’s a situation where the venue or the venue renter puts us out. I’m not somebody that comes in the back door and runs out the back door and disappears on you. I stay and I sign each and every book,” she stated.
Sister Souljah encourages readers, learners and the curious to find her on twitter @souljahbooks. Not only does she tweet for herself, but Sister Souljah also personally replies to every e-mail she receives.
“I actually enjoy the exchange. It’s not obligatory for me, and it’s just something that I enjoy doing,” she stated. “I like to hear people’s thoughts, and opinions and reactions, whether it’s positive or negative, or maybe they’ll mention a point that nobody else did.”
Sister Souljah also made an appearance at Chapters in Brampton on October 1st and Knowledge Bookstore on October 2nd.
Visit www.SisterSouljah.com to find out where she’ll be next.
A Different Booklist also had pre-signed copies of Sister Souljah’s work available.
The Coldest Winter Ever is one of Sister Souljah’s most popular books.
Audience surrounds Sister Souljah as she vowed to autograph each book presented to her
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Interesting response from SS about choosing a Japanese women. Although well articulated, I find that her response a bit troubling. It pits the quiet, humble, attractive Japanese woman against the stereotypically loud, aggressive, unfeminine black woman.
Has not the media, popular culture and others done a skilled job of placing us beneath all other woman? SS should have perhaps written about the many exceptions, the beautiful, gentle, kind hearted black women of faith that I see on a daily basis. This would have been truly uplifting…
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