Street Lit/Urban Fiction
Q. Some of the kids in the afterschool program that meets in our library are asking about "street lit." What is this and what are some resources for building a small collection?
A. Street Lit, sometimes called Urban Fiction or Hip Hop Fiction or even Ghetto Fiction, is one of the fastest-growing new literary genres. According to the Library Journal 2006 Book Buying Survey article, "Budgets Rebound," by Barbara Hoffert (emphasis added):
Aside from chick lit, rapidly expanding areas include graphic novels (not all fiction, of course) and African American fiction... In addition, from the Central Arkansas Library System, Little Rock, where African American fiction tops the list of subjects where expenditures are rising, to Houston PL, which must do large annual backlist orders to catch up with demand, African American works, particularly fiction, are on the move. A burgeoning segment of that market is street lit, which many of LJ's respondents have begun purchasing aggressively, turning to nontraditional sources for information and ignoring the absence of reviews that for many was initially a stumbling block.
The Fall 2006 issue of Young Adult Library Services: The Official Journal of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALS) includes the featured article, "Street Lit: Flying Off Teen Fiction Bookshelves in Philadelphia Public Libraries," by Vanessa Morris M.S.L.S.; Sandra Hughes-Hassell, Ph.D.; Denise P. Agosto, Ph.D.; and Darren T. Cottman, MLIS. The article includes a history of the genre and a report on its ever-growing popularity among teens in libraries, including its use in teen book clubs.
The article explains that this genre's titles show a vivid familiarity with the settings, situations, and relationships in which these urban teens inhabit, providing a validation and reflection of their outer and inner lives that few other teen media outlets consider. Not all titles handle these topics the same, and some titles clearly mean well in the face of imperfect execution of their stories. Other titles are letter-perfect and are celebrated by teens and young adults (and older adults) nationwide for their themes, plots, characters, and/or humor. Teens do discern the varying levels of effectiveness; asking and discussion of likes and dislikes of individual stories and authors help spark the creation of expectations in literature itself for these readers, with the reading of more and more titles developing and individualizing those expectations into further self-knowledge and personal expression.