Joey Pinkney

I knew it had to happen eventually. I mean, the realness I write is just too much for the mainstream to digest. Just kidding…

Well, I usually post the my reviews on Amazon.com within 48 hours of submitting them to the websites I review for. So I sat for a couple of days after I posted the review on Amazon.com and noticed that my review for Crave All Lose All never showed up.

So I emailed Amazon.com’s customer service like, “What’s up?!”

Actually, I wrote this:

I submitted a review for Crave All Lose All by Erick S
Gray that has yet to post. What do I need to do to make sure my review is posted?

Here’s what they told me:

Thank you for writing to Amazon.com.

Your review of “Crave All Lose All” was removed because your comments in large part focused on authors and their intentions, rather than reviewing the item itself.

Our guidelines do not allow discussions that criticize authors or their intentions. We encourage all voices to respond openly in our store, both positive and negative. However, we do exert some editorial control over our customer reviews.

As such, your review cannot be posted on Amazon.com in its current format. What I can suggest is that you resubmit your review, restricting your comments to critically analyzing the content of the item.

After that was a bunch of blah, blah, blah about reading guidelines, forum discussions and something about if I got an attitude then I could delete my reviews and take them elsewhere. Okay…it didn’t go that far, but I felt slighted.

The nerve!

Oh yeah, I changed some stuff around with the original review, condensed it and resubmitted it. Hopefully it will go through this time. I’ll keep you posted.

(While I’m on the subject, could just one person find one of my reviews on Amazon.com and click yes or no where it asks if the review was helpful or not? I mean, Crave All Lose All will be my 14th review on Amazon.com without anyone giving me any kind of flavor!)

UPDATE 05-14-08

I checked this morning just to be looking and the review I put together by reconfiguring the Crave All Lose All review I did for UrbanBookSource.com. That’s the original that got banned for talking more about the author’s intentions that the book itself. What?!

One thing that rings true with Urban Lit, Street Lit or Urban Fiction (whatever you like to call it) is the fact that there is a strong female aspect to the movement. African American females are well represented in Urban Fiction’s readership and authorship. I would even go so far as to say that most of the readers of this genre are African American females.

Why is that important? Because it is Mother’s Day, of course.

I’d like to take the time to do something special, and unique, and give a Happy Mother’s Day shout-out to three easily identifiable mother’s of urban lit as we know it today.

Sister Souljah, author of The Coldest Winter Ever

Sister Souljah is the perfect example of a person that was meant to be somebody. Look her up on wikipedia to see what I mean. The Coldest Winter Ever is often cited as the novel which inspired many of the established authors of the Urban Fiction genre. Sold out of the trunk of Sister Souljah’s car, this novel went on to be a bestselling classic and street certified.

A sequel to The Coldest Winter Ever is supposed to be released October 18, 2008 entitled Midnight: A Gangster Love Story. Sister Souljah and Jada Pinkett-Smith are in the process of producing a movie version of The Coldest Winter Ever.

Teri Woods, author of True to the Game

Can you believe that True to the Game was turned down? Yes, and it sat in her closet for two years before Teri decided to pump it out the trunk of her car. The realism of this Urban Fiction classic showed future urban fiction authors that they could also put their stories out there and make things happen. Teri Woods is not only a respected author but also a respected publisher releasing quality urban fiction titles on a regular basis.

Vickie Stringer, author of Let That Be the Reason (Triple Crown Publications Presents)

Her publishing company is locally known and internationally respected! Vickie Stringer jumped into the book publishing industry with her debut novel Let That Be The Reason. She later started her own publishing house, Triple Crown Publications, and has literally taken control of Urban Literature.

Turned down by 26 publishers, Vickie has been offered as much as $3 million to sale the flagship of Hip Hop Lit, Triple Crown Publications.

Christopher Chambers writes about the “blacks only” section popping up in many bookstores and supermarts. In his quest for Matt Johnson’s graphic novel Incognegro, he’s directed to the “black section”. Mixed in with the urban fiction is other classics like Richard Wright’s Native Son and Dorothy West’s The Wedding. ( must admit that I’ve only heard of and read Native Son.)

His frustration came from the fact that African American authors and pushed into one section regardless of genre, time period or quality of writing. This is how I feed about it. Until these big corporations start to care about black authors as authors, as opposed to African American authors, we can’t expect for them to include African American authors with the other “greats”.

But to be mad about the success of urban lit is…typical, yet natural. Urban lit follows the same pattern that other forms of entertainment in black America have taken. The best and most recent example would be hip hop. Black artists were making music that their people liked. Not every black person was down, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was that hip hop wasn’t tailor made for mainstream consumption.That didn’t stop the music from being made in makeshift studios. That didn’t stop the music from being sold out of the trunks of cars. That didn’t stop the music from finally making it mainstream. That also didn’t stop the music from being raped just like the jazz, blues and rock n’ roll that came before it.

And just like hip hop, urban fiction writer’s hustled their way into prominence. While the corporations swooped in to make some money from the trend, black writer’s of other genres tend to feel slighted and in return attack.

It makes me wonder if there is some literary Willie Lynch that held a big publishing event somewhere overseas. I bet it’s in a book. (Because we don’t read, right…) Pit the new African American writers against the old African American writers. Pit the intellectuals against the uneducated. Pit urban lit against African American romance…