Urban fiction

Urban fiction, also known as street lit or street fiction, is a literary genre set in a city landscape; however, the genre is as much defined by the socio-economic realities and culture of its characters as the urban setting. The tone for urban fiction is usually dark, focusing on the underside of city living. Profanity, sex, and violence are usually explicit, with the writer not shying away from or watering-down the material. Most authors of this genre draw upon their past experiences to depict their storylines.

Much of contemporary urban fiction is written by African Americans, due to the current demographics of inner cities. In his famous essay The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois discussed how a veil separated the African American community from the outside world. By extension, fiction written by people outside the African American culture could not (at least with any degree of verisimilitude) depict the people, settings, and events experienced by people in that culture. Try as some might, those who grew up outside the veil (i.e., outside the urban culture) may find it difficult to write fiction grounded in inner-city and African American life.

In a broader sense, urban fiction can be traced back to the 19th century as realist and modern authors began writing literature that reflected a changing urban society. City novels of yesteryear that depict the low-income survivalist realities of city living can also be considered urban fiction or street lit. In her book The Readers' Advisory Guide to Street Literature (2011), Vanessa Irvin Morris points out that titles considered canonical or "classic" today, could be considered the urban fiction or "street lit" of its day.

Some of the most notable examples of urban fiction from this time period include Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, called the "greatest of all American urban novels," and Ulysses by James Joyce. Titles that depict historical inner-city realities include Stephen Crane's Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893), Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1838), and Paul Laurence Dunbar's The Sport of the Gods (1902). In this vein, urban fiction is not just an African American or Latino phenomenon, but, rather, the genre exists along a historical continuum that includes stories from diverse cultural and ethnic experiences.

In tandem with the modernist movement that sought to challenge traditional modes of literary representation, so came a new wave of urban fiction. According to Katherine Mullin, "the alienated modernist self is a product of the big city rather than the countryside or small town." According to Elizabeth Young in the essay anthology Shopping in Space, "the city offers unparalleled opportunities to the creative artist," ranging from "greed and deviancy, crime, bohemianism, sexual excess, nightlife and narcotics." Some of the most prevalent cities in 20th century urban fiction are New York City, especially the neighborhoods Greenwich Village, Times Square, and Harlem; Chicago; Los Angeles; and San Francisco.

The Beat Generation was a counterculture literary movement concentrated in New York City that contributed much to urban fiction. Author William S. Burroughs' novel Junky is a semi-autobiographical chronicle of heroin addiction on the fringes of society in New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City and a seminal text of New York urban fiction. The book is notable for its use of time period contextual slang, something characteristic of urban literature. Regarding the accounts of drug use, Will Self writes that Burroughs' "descriptions of the 'junk territories' his alter ego inhabits are, in fact, depictions of urban alienation itself. And just as in these areas junk is 'a ghost in daylight on a crowded street', so his junkie characters who are invariably described as 'invisible', 'dematerialized' and "boneless" - are, like the pseudonymous 'William Lee' himself, the sentient residue left behind when the soul has been cooked up and injected into space." Accounts of drug addiction and social alienation are also common in modern and contemporary urban fiction."

The Harlem Renaissance was an importance precursor to contemporary urban fiction that depicts the experience of African Americans. Langston Hughes was an influential author of early urban literature and his "The Ballad of the Landlord" is regarded as an early text of urban poetry. The poem "grew out of conditions in New York City’s Harlem in the 1930’s. In graphic terms it describes the escalation of anger and frustration that tenants experienced trying to get landlords to make basic repairs. It is structured like an old time blues song until the final verse where the rhythm changes." According to Sabrina Nixon, "instead of being swallowed by the depression of living in the ghetto, Hughes made it work for him."

As the demographics of urban cities shifted, so did that of urban fiction. Contemporary urban fiction was (and largely still is) a genre written by African Americans. In the research paper "Urban Underworlds: A geography of twentieth-century American literature and culture," Thomas Heise explores how urban settings in literature reflect "pathologized identities and lurid fears" and why American cities have been selectively targeted as "urban underworlds" in representations of urban fiction.