Book Of The Week
The Coldest Winter Ever By Sister Souljah
Have you ever had a time in your life where you just wanted to be someone else? Where you just wanted to say screw it and live someone else’s life? Rewind to 1999. I was going through a thing, and I wanted to be anyone but me. I don’t even think I took into consideration what that could potentially mean. I used to go to the bookstore and just walk up and down the rows of books whenever I got down about something. It brought me comfort. At that time I had four children, and I really couldn’t afford to buy books. I would get them from the library, but I had lost a book, or something had happened to a book I had checked out, and I owed money to the library, and I didn’t have $50 to give them at the time. I remember starting The Coldest Winter Ever in the book store and getting mad that I didn’t have money to buy the book, so about sixty pages in I put it back and I left. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I went to the library by my house later that week because I was going to read some more of it. They didn’t even have the book. I went to a different library, and someone had checked it out. I gave up. I forgot all about the book. I got a letter in the mail from the library saying that the book that I thought I had lost had been returned and I only owed $6. I remembered the book. I went to the library the next day, paid my money and put in a request for the book. I waited over two months for the book. I read the book in two days, but since I had it checked out for a week, I read it twice. I wanted to be Winter. I didn’t want some of her circumstances, but the book took me to another place. I realized first hand what it meant when my grade school teachers told me that I could go anywhere I wanted to go in a book. I was Winter when I needed to be and when I was ok, I could be me again. Thank you to every writer who ever had an idea because it matters.
The Writer
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