The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah is a novel that is very amusing. The main character, Winter was basically born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Her mother named her Winter because she was born in one of the biggest snow storms. Her father builds a huge empire and her mother never worked a day in her life. She always had all the money, fine jewelry and the best clothes. Winter was always spoiled and had a huge problem with money management. She always spent a lot of money on materialistic things and never seemed to have a problem with it. Not until her father got locked up, she realizes that she needs to manage her money. Her life went downhill and she used all the hustling tricks she learned from her father to survive. Her mother turned into a crack addict and she and her siblings were separated and placed into foster care.
Winter, which is a hero in this novel, had to go through all the trials and tribulations in order to really get to know who she was. Most importantly she learned how to take care of herself and not have everything given to her.
Joseph Campbell's Monomyth is basically about the hero's journey and the steps they take to get to the end. In Joseph Campbell's Monomyth he has the departure, adventure and the return of the hero. This monomyth is a pattern found in many different chronicles ("Monomyth"). The departure is when you're separated from something or someone. Then there is the adventure is when basically the journey. During the adventure you discover new things, run in to new people and most of the time you struggle during your journey. Then lastly you have the return, where most of the time you return back to where you were and try to change things around or you want to go somewhere different. Either way when you return you come back changed or wanting to change. Sometimes you come back as a new person.
Winters father, Santiaga was arrested the night of her birthday. The police raided the entire house and took everything that was held inside of it including clothes, jewelry, cars, drugs and even broke into their safe and took all the families money. There were fifteen cops inside and twenty cops outside of the house. They arrested everyone but the mother and the children. One of the feds said that it'll be a long time before they see Santiaga anywhere besides behind bars. All winter could think about was the money and how were they going to survive without Santiaga. Her mother only had seven hundred dollars to her name and Winter had nine hundred and fifty dollars to her name. Winter kept thinking to herself about what would her father do in this situation; he would plan and not panic. She thought about selling the furniture in her house to generate cash flow or maybe even sell the entire house before the feds come and raid it. She asked her mother what she thought about her idea and her mother didn't care about anything else but talking to her husband Santiaga. She was so attached to him that, he's the only person she thinks about. She told Winter "Whatever your father says, that’s what I’ll do"(p.96). Her mother couldn't even think for herself. Since Winters mother was always sad because she recently got shot in the face and now her husband got arrested, Winter had no choice but to be strong for her family. Winter figured she and her mother would go visit her father to get some advice on what to do. The police arrived to their house and wanted to ask questions, her mother immediately got upset because she figured that they're not going to stop harassing her family. Winters mother failed to cooperate with the police and told them to arrest her.
Once Winter arrived to her father’s visit, she shared with him her ideas and he agreed. He also told her to try to catch up with one of his workers, Midnight because he's has fifty thousand dollars of his. When she got back home from visiting her father, the housekeeper told her the BCW came and took her three baby sisters because they're underage and in a house with no legal guardian. Winter's life quickly started to fall apart, because every day since her 17th birthday there was something new. Her father got locked up, her mother voluntarily told the police to lock her up, BCW came and took her sisters, the feds arrested the majority of her family and most of her father’s workers except Midnight and now she's all by herself, so now there is a big separation.
The BCW finally got a hold of Winter and placed her in a group home called "The House of Success." At the end of chapter nine, Winters Aunt B turned her into BCW on her because refused to give her money that she didn’t have to give. Her aunt also stole the rest of Winters life savings, 2500 dollars was all that Winter had left. Winter would soon be 18, so she only had to be in the House of Success for 330 more days.
Once she arrived there, she was introduced to discipline and curfew and of course she didn’t like it because she never had to go through this. "If you came in after 11:00 pm, your forfeited your passes for the rest of the week. If you were late three times in thirty days, you permantly lost your evening 'opportunities'"(p. 191). This was all new to Winter and the challenge for her was "making something out of nothing." Somehow she had to make some money while she was in there because the sixty dollar stipend they got every week wasn't good enough for her. Just by observing the girls in the group home she decided she would provide the girls with what they need and help them understand what they needed. Winter provided different services like selling clothes, giving beauty tips, doing their hair, nails, make up and even giving them facials. Every week she would write down a list of things everyone needed and her friend Simone from Brooklyn, would go and pick it up and deliver it to the group home. Both Winter and Simone made money with this side hustle. Within twenty one days Winter made twenty five hundred dollars and never left her room. Winter finally learned how to make her own money without having someone always giving it to her. When Winter got her weekend passes, she would hang out with her friend Simone and Simone would fill her in on the latest news of Brooklyn. Simone informed her that Winter's mother turned into a crack-addict, her Aunt B turned into a prostitute and her father, Santiaga was sentenced to life in jail. Winters entire family had their individual hustles going on.
Simone was seven months pregnant and needed to slow down her eighth and ninth month, which would affect Winter's cash flow, because Simone was the only person Winter had left. All of Winters friends from Brooklyn turned on her. Winter tried visiting her father to get some guidance on what to do next, but he refused the visit. Her whole attitude completely changed, she cried and slept for several days. She became temporarily depressed. She didn’t eat, drink nor left her room, until the security from the group home demanded her to get up and pay a psychiatrist a visit. She told the psychiatrist a lie as to why she was feeling the way she was to get out of the visit. One thing about Winter was that she never wanted people to know her business, especially her family’s business. She always let people find out on their own. She always felt that she was better than everyone and probably would feel embarrassed if she told her business. Especially since she always had everything a girl could ever want, she would never tell someone her down fall. Winter was a pathological liar and didn’t trust anyone.
Winter hadn't heard from Simone in a few days and finally she got in touch with her. Simone was locked up for boosting clothes and the bottom line was that she needed Winter to give her $1500 for bail. Winter didn’t want to give Simone her last, because she knew for a fact their Simone had either did something stupid with her money or had the money stashed for the baby and just wanted to use hers. Anyway she thought it was a lose lose situation and she knew Simone wasn't going to pay her back. So when Simone finally got out of jail, she got five girls to chase after Winter. They didn’t catch her at all, but she decided she had to leave the House of Success, because Simone knew where she would be and when she would leave.
Winter wound up staying a Sister Souljah's home for a while until she turned eighteen.
At the end of the story it shows how history repeats itself. Winter had to attend her mother’s funeral in a prison jumpsuit and in handcuffs. She had to do fifteen years in jail for getting caught with drugs. Winter saw her little sister Mercedes there and noticed that she was as beautiful has she was when she wasn’t locked up. Winter noticed Mercedes had fallen into the same trap that she was in; Winter wanted to warn her sister about life but then thought to herself that Mercedes would just have to learnon her own just like she did.
