Sister Souljah’s new novel, A Deeper Love Inside, enters The New York Times hardcover fiction list at No. 7. Souljah is having a good run: this is her third consecutive best-seller, and earlier this month, the website forharriet.com included her debut novel, The Coldest Winter Ever, on its list of 100 recommended books by black women. (Other authors on the list included canonical figures like Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as celebrated younger ones like Edwidge Danticat, Martha Southgate and ZZ Packer.)
Yet in some circles Souljah remains best known as the rapper whom Bill Clinton criticized during the 1992 presidential campaign, in a speech that seemed calculated to reassure nervous white voters he wasn’t so liberal after all. Ever since, when candidates attempt to distance themselves from controversial or unpopular elements in their party, the political class refers to it as a “Sister Souljah moment.” Not that Souljah minds the legacy. “For me, ‘Sister Souljah moment’ is just when you meet a powerful and intelligent and beautiful woman, and you just can’t seem to forget her,” she told a North Carolina newspaper in 2009. “People talk about it like it was yesterday. So apparently they cannot forget me, and I take it as a compliment.”
Source: NYTimes
