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Midnight: A Gangster Love Story | 
| Author: Sister Souljah
Publisher: Atria
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $17.79
You Save: $9.16 (34%)
Rating:  144 reviews
Sales Rank: 706
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Atria Books Hardcover Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.7
ISBN: 1416545182
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781416545187
Publication Date: November 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Sister Souljah, the hip-hop generation's number one author and most compelling storyteller, delivers a powerful story about love and loyalty, strength and family. In her bestselling novel, The Coldest Winter Ever, Sister Souljah introduced the world to Midnight, a brave but humble lieutenant to a prominent underworld businessman. Now, in a highly anticipated follow-up to her million-selling masterpiece, she brings readers into the life and dangerously close to the heart of this silent, fearless young man.Raised in a wealthy, influential, Islamic African family, Midnight enjoys a life of comfort, confidence, and protection. Midnight's father provides him with a veil of privilege and deep, devoted love, but he never hides the truth about the fierce challenges of the world outside of his estate. So when Midnight's father's empire is attacked, he sends Midnight with his mother to the United States. In the streets of Brooklyn, a young Midnight uses his Islamic mind-set and African intelligence to protect the ones he loves, build a business, reclaim his wealth and status, and remain true to his beliefs. Midnight, a handsome and passionate young man, attracts many women. How he interacts and deals with them is a unique adventure. This is a highly sensual and tremendous love story about what a man is willing to risk and give to the women he loves most. Midnight will remain in your mind and beat in your heart for a lifetime. Her "raw and true voice" (Publishers Weekly) will both soothe and arouse you. In a beautifully written and masterfully woven story, Sister Souljah has given us Midnight, and solidified her presence as the mother of all contemporary urban literature.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 139 more reviews...
mixed emotions about this November 10, 2008
29 out of 32 found this review helpful
Like others have said, it is a prequel, it does get boring at times, and does appear unbelievable at others. However, it is a very ambitious and provacative novel. It's literature. It will make you think, it will make you question yourself. It may even have you considering changing the way you operate. It does calls American born blacks out about their behavior and beliefs - hell, all Americans for that matter. Midnight is vicious. Was it worth the wait? No. Is it worth $26.95? No. However, it is worth the read. It can generate some serious dialogue in our community. It's a very intellectual read that can and should be appreciated. It provides plenty to talk about if you can manage to finish it.
My biggest problem is it left me with too many questions, more questions than I had going into it. And, I'm just hoping it doesn't take another ten years get the answers.
Also, I don't think it should be referred to as a gangster's love story becasue nothing about Midnight, in this story, is gangster. Yes, he is a killer - solely for the protection of himself and loved ones - but NOT a gangster.
So, if you're looking to reunite with Winter and her family and will be highly disappointed if they are not there, don't waste your money. If your don't mind be taken on a journey that's overly informative yet sometimes dull along they way, then gear up. Midnight aint for everybody.
 Midnight November 6, 2008
26 out of 30 found this review helpful
First off if you are looking for a sequel to The Coldest Winter Ever, this aint it, you will be very disappointed. Though the story is about the charachter Midnight from the Coldest Winter Ever, this book is about his life before the Santiagos. As a matter of fact the oldest he gets in this book is the age of fourteen. But let me tell you he happens to be a very mature fourteen yr. old, who lives the life of a well bred man who instead if giving into temptation resist it. I found him so captivating the way he lives his life, the culture, the religion, though I do not agree with everything of muslim faith i do believe that if we all could just live by this one law, no fornication!!! we would be much better off as a people, Dont You Think? My favorite charachter in this book after Midnight of course, is Bangs I found her as he did funny but also bold. As much as I respected Midnight for staying true to hiself and his beliefs I found myself a little upset that things could'nt and would'nt come together for Midnight and Bangs i really believe he would have made a big difference in her life a positive difference. so even though I was a little disappointed that this had nothing to do with the Coldest Winter Ever. I was not disapointed with this book not at all. All ive got to say is Sister Souljah you better be working on part2 Because you can not leave me hangin like this!!!!!!!
 misleading November 11, 2008
19 out of 23 found this review helpful
I was so angry with this book. It was misleading, embarassing, unethical, and down right stupid. No ties to The Coldest Winter Ever. That is the only reason people wanted this book. Not to hear about a fourteen year old in love Yeah right. The author new we wanted a sequel thats why she named the book Midnight. She misled us. It should have been called Not in this Lifetime.
THIS IS...A MASTERPIECE! November 5, 2008
12 out of 17 found this review helpful
"MIDNIGHT: A LOVE STORY"
By Sister Souljah
REVIEWED BY KOLA BOOF
10 STARS!!
When I Pre-Ordered Sister Souljah's latest book almost a year ago, I had no idea that the lead character would share a journey very similar to my own...from SUDAN to AMERICA.
Now after receiving the book and consuming it in one long, fascinated
pillow prop...I have to say, one novelist to another, what I truly feel...
IT'S A MASTERPIECE.
AND...it's about time that a mainstream book presented such a positive
and heartfelt portrayal of MUSLIM characters (God knows that because of my own personal pain as a Sudanese forced out of Africa, I have rarely been able to). But this book fully renders Umma and Midnight as human beings; normal, brave, flawed and complicated as all the rest of us.
I love Sister Souljah so much for being brave enough to take on such
brevity via such a cabal as Corporate Publishing.
I love her even more for doing what Lauryn Hill did in music---identify,
highlight and expose the self-hatred and self-destruction of otherwise
good (but misguided) brothers and sisters who need so much to be given
positive examples of who they are (were meant to be)...and to do it
without preaching as Sister Souljah does so marvelously here.
MIDNIGHT is a son that we can all wish to give birth to ourselves.
When you close this book...you really feel that there is HOPE for
our young people's vitality and talent and natural beauty to be
rooted and bloomed.
Affirmation that we don't always get from other segments of HIP HOP
culture.
And since the day I first read "NO DISRESPECT", I have always known that Sister Soujah could take us to this level.
When her book "COLDEST WINTER EVER" came out--I thought her voice was just as vibrant and important as an Alice Walker, Maya Angelou or a Toni Morrison, but from a YOUNGER more HIP perspective. I knew that she would go beyond the Crass Exploitation that makes up so much of the "Street Lit" offerings.
Of course, I don't agree with everything that Sister Souljah espouses.
We are two different (but extremely similar) types of warrior women.
I believe that women's BREASTS should be exposed and be viewed as
they were BEFORE Islam and Christianity invaded Africa...as SACRED
ornaments representing GOD and the circle of life.
I don't believe that women are impure and should be covered up.
I was born Muslim in Omdurman, Sudan to a Muslim father who was
considered "White".
I have written much in my own books about the fact that it was "illegal" for my father and I to have meals together in Sudan's Sunni society...women I saw rolled in carpets and burned alive for not producing boys...enslavement of "darker blacks" by Brown Muslim Religious Fanatics and mass killings of "river & sun people" who refused to SUBMIT to the invading Islamic religion...
...much of which led to me rejecting the Muslim faith as an adult (I
rejected Christianity as well).
BUT I CAN SAY...that my Muslim father was one of the greatest human beings who ever lived.
AND I DO know that many of his Muslim friends back in Sudan (and my Islamic Uncles in Egypt) are wonderful, loving, nurturing human beings who believe in fairness, kindness and God's ultimate love for all people.
I can also attest that IN AMERICA...I have been befriended by extremely
loving, gentle, brilliant BLACK AMERICAN MUSLIMS who are nothing like
the strict, fanatical people I knew back in Africa (and later) the Middle East and other Arab countries.
It is very sad that there is so much racist hatred for Muslim people
simply because of their religion...it is WRONG...and it is very important
for ALL ARTISTS to begin trying to create more BALANCE in the portrayals
of Islamic peoples. More "accurate" and positive portrayals.
SOULJAH does that without pandering and without prosalytizing (sp).
Many of you won't be able to appreciate my review, because you're
interested in the "SUPERFICIAL".
You want Vain, Sexy Scar-faced WINTER and something "Hood"...because
perhaps you aren't willing to GROW and STRETCH a little...so that you
can receive the understated wisdom and lessons about self-acceptance
and survival that this wise book brings to you.
And that in itself is a great, great tragedy.
THIS...is an important book for our community, people.
THIS...is an important writer.
There's another book that you really need to read..."GATHER TOGETHER
IN MY NAME" by Tracy Price-Thompson. Another brilliant and heart-wrenching classic that bares an urgent message for our people while
still be an exciting rollercoaster of a page-turner.
I just ask that you BE OPEN...learn to use literature to empower
and nourish your souls....
...and that you really "MIDNIGHT" a chance.
Because writers like Sister Souljah and Tracy Price-Thompson are really blessing us this year.
For originality, storytelling, guts, social value and sheer literary
magic....."MIDNIGHT" by Sister Souljah deserves 10 STARS!!!
SMART readers will agree.
KOLA BOOF
Novelist-Poet
National Chairwoman of Sudan's SSPP
(Sudanese Sensitization Peace Project)
Me No Like November 23, 2008
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
Turr-uh-ible!!!
Turr-uh-ible!!!
Turr-uh-ible!!!
Black women other than Sister Souljah apparently are the
scum of New York according to this book. None of them are worthy.
On top of that they're supposed to base their worth on being able
to have a Man and be part of his Muslim harem with their faces all
covered up.
What a great message for our daughters.
I guess being a fat-face chubby something like Sister Souljah
would make any woman dream of being covered up and repressed to
"SUBMIT" to her black massa kang.
This book left a bad taste in my mouth. Too much stuff in it that
just doesn't jibe like a 14 year old acting 40.
Knowing what I know about Sudan, I doubt if the brown Arab-looking
woman with straight hair in the photos who is supposed to be Midnight's
"mother" would be so proud to have a pure black son in Sudan.
Does the author not know that Khartoum brown Arab Muslims are slaughtering
millions of pure black Muslims in Darfur as we speak? For nothing more than being too black?
So how is UMMA the only brown straight hair Muslim in Sudan proud to have
a child who looks pure as black can get? Like I said, knowing Sudan I
just don't buy Sister Soujah's Muslim Fairy Tale.
The book is too long 500 pages. The author doesn't have the courage
to call out the black Hip Hop men who abandoned her Pro-Black Nationalist
rhetoric and got with anything but a SISTER so she takes it out on black
women blaming them for the fact that she never had a daddy. The moral
of the story claims if only we'd submit to Islam and be obedient to some
group of men we'd all be noble. I can't believe Kola Boof recommended this crappy book to me in an email blast. This is not empowering to sisters and Sister Souljah is losing a lot of fans behind what amounts
to a royal diss of African-Americans.
Don't waste your money.
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