So, reading this again 22 years later, I feel sorry for her, not judgmental. If she was richer, whiter, more educated or connected to the right folks, it might not be that way. Her beauty and ability to lie, steal and manipulate are her best bargaining chips–and that has awful consequences. Her drug kingpin father is arrested, her pampered world is dismantled and she does what she feels she has to do to survive using what she knows. While Winter is an awful person, her sociopathy is not entirely her fault. The world has very little sympathy for Black girls to begin with, and while this book was meant as a moral fable, it does a better job of showing how society fails us.

If Winter Santiaga was a real person, I’d have a hard time hiding my disgust.Īnd there lies the problem, really. She brags about brand names and hairdos while death and chaos surround her. She’s a disloyal friend, a scammer, a hustler, a pathological liar. The eponymous teenage protagonist of Sister Souljah’s hit urban lit novel is selfish, spoiled, mean, vain and materialistic. Now there’s a lesson for you Winter.Back in 1999, I was an 18-year old nerd who spent way too much time reading.(Big surprise.) I was a soft, weak naive thing without an ounce of fight in me–but I hated this book and would have happily beat the brakes off of somebody like Winter Santiaga in real life. I thought I could depend on certain family members to take care of some small but important things, now I know that I can’t. A lot of them been breaking down under the pressure, slipping. I got to admit, I wish the rest of the family was strong like the two of us. Listen, don’t worry about me, you know I’m holding it down. I didn’t want you to think your pops was falling off (smile). I was concentrating on things that needed to be done. Winter- This letter is to the most beautiful daughter any man could ever have. “What’s up, girl?” I asked Rashida, trying to get things between me and her back to normal by striking up a little conversation. She was lying on her bed, reading her book, of course. To quickly assess the difficulty of the text, read a short excerpt:īesides the security staff, no one was there except Rashida.

What reading level is The Coldest Winter Ever book?

The coldest winter ever review