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Book Review of What's Really Hood!: A Collection of Tales from the Streets

What's Really Hood!: A Collection of Tales from the Streets
babyjulie avatar reviewed on + 336 more book reviews


Being that I've been extremely disenchanted with almost the entire urban fiction genre lately I fully expected to be bored through these stories.
I'm very, very tired of reading about characters and only getting a sense of who they are from the brand names they wear and their measurements. I know for a fact that there are authors in this genre with enough intelligence and talent to fully round out a character. Why are they stifling themselves like this? It's almost as tacky as inserting theirself or an author friend in their own book. It smacks of non-talent to be honest and I wish it would stop. I envision authors sitting in front of their computer Googling little known pricey designers and using them in their stories. Is this supposed to one-up the reader? It only makes this one laugh and pity the author honestly and after reading other reviews and talking to people I now know I'm not the only one.
And while I found that I liked Wahida Clark's the least I still found myself enjoying it. The others were all better than Clark's in my opinion and I think any and all could be, and more importantly, should be, made into full length novels.
There were a few minor points that irked me but only one I can remember and since the book isn't in the room with me I'll only mention it. In the first story, Martin writes of a characters "baby mama" using 'BM' and then for some reason deems it necessary to specify, in parathensis, that BM = baby mama. Is there anyone reading urban fiction that wouldn't know this? If so, why? The same story uses the term 'alphabet boys' with no explanation. I would think more people would be confused about the latter personally. I hardly think too many people would have read the sentence with 'BM' in it and assumed it was meant to be 'bowel movement'. I can't see the story delving off into the character going in the house to visit his pet turd floating in the toilet.
Anyway, I'm not a huge fan of short stories and for exactly this reason - I get ticked off when I get into a story and all of a sudden it's cut down. Bonta's story started slow for me and as I was thinking I wouldn't like it I got more and more into it. The ending of Clark's story was no good at all I think and the "reader's guide" questions for all of the stories are jokes.
The short stories themselves, if turned into full novels, I'd read in a heartbeat and I'm looking forward to pulling out some of Jihad's books that I have here. I may even give Victor L. Martin a try with one of his.
I'd have to say my favorite was Jihad's and my least favorite was Clark's. I do have to say there isn't much between them though, they were all pretty good and would be much better as an entire book.