Winter takes up the skills she learned from her father to maintain her lifestyle, such as selling illicit items in the girls' home to make money.

After her father is arrested, Winter encounters much more strife,[2] and eventually lands up repeating many of the mistakes and experiences of her parents.

Sister Souljah: A fictional portrayal of the author herself, who advocates for the improvement of black communities.

[3] Ricky Santiaga: Winter's father and he is depicted as a man who lavishes attention, love, and material gifts on the women in his life, while being a calculated and violent drug lord.

She is a teen mother who seems to be content with her lot in life as long as she is provided material compensation for her sexual favors.

Sister Souljah believes the splitting of fiction as such is a result of the exclusionary hierarchy of literature that sidelines authors of color.

"[5] A 1999 review in Publishers Weekly commended and criticized Sister Souljah's writing style, calling it both "raw and true" and "rough and unsophisticated" in the same sentence.

"[7] Kirkus Reviews lauds the language, calling it a "frank" "tour de force", but criticizes Winter for her narcissism and materialism.

[9] Lana's rapid descent into drug use and prostitution, eventually resulting in her death, provides the most extreme example.

Ricky Santiaga, the father of Winter, was a powerful street pharmacist, but due to the nature of their society, his skill was not put towards a legal profession and he was removed from the community.

Without her husband, she reduces herself to prostituting herself for drugs and quickly becomes ill. All the characters show greed, a condition the fictional Sister Souljah believes is ubiquitous in her community and would like to remedy.

[1] According to the May 2008 issue of Vibe Magazine, Jada Pinkett Smith was developing a film based on the book and was going to serve as its executive producer.

[10] In 2011, she told the magazine that she hadn't found a good business package yet, but she was still interested in creating a film.