Reading Response: The Coldest Winter Ever

While reading The Coldest Winter Ever, I learned a lot about what it meant to be a strong black woman or even a woman in general. I also learned what I should expect out of a man and how I should be treated. To me, Sister Souljah’s words are so strong. Everything she says has power to it. She is very aware of the community around her and is very involved in trying to better the conditions of the ghettos in New York where she came from.

            I read a passage in the book where she is asking the girls in her weekly woman group what they believe in. What Sister Souljah had to say stuck out to me because in class we were writing essays on what we believe in. Each week Souljah has women empowerment meetings held at her home. The girls are from the inner city of Brooklyn and are introducing themselves and sharing what they believe in. Souljah asks the girls to be as honest as possible. Majority of them didn’t know what they believed in. Souljah then says to the girls, “Knowing what you believe lays a foundation for your life. Then you can have principles and ideas that you follow. Things that you are unwilling to compromise. If you’re deciding what you believe everyday and everyday you believe something else, you have nothing to look forward to but chaos.” Her statement is so true. How would you know what to do in any situation if from the beginning you didn’t have any rules and regulations for yourself? She does not tell the group of girls what to believe in, but help the girls get to the core of why they do the things they do.