What’s Life After Death Look Like for Winter Santiaga?

Life After Death by Sister Souljah, a 22-year follow up sequel to The Coldest Winter Ever – Is it worth the read? [SPOILER ALERT: Critical details in this book are mentioned in this book review.]

The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah started a phenomenon of loyal followers and invoked inspiration amongst the literary community. Many other authors in Urban Literature use similar storylines, cover designs, and characters that emulate the essence of The Coldest Winter Ever. This novel popularized urban literature. People everywhere fell in love with the Santiaga family and their story. Life After Death by Sister Souljah is the sequel into the world of Winter Santiaga.

The opening of Life After Death gave us that raw heat from its predecessor. After 15 years in the pen, Souljah shoots Winter on the first page. Naturally, I was excited to see how everything unfolded. Who shot her? What would her life would be like after she returned into the world? What I did not expect was for her to die. On page fucking two. Well, now we know what happens to Winter. She dies. The end.

Killing Winter so quickly, in my opinion, was a lazy story move. It did not serve any purpose to Winter’s journey.

Souljah does not have the capacity to write a story of this caliber. The fantasy/supernatural genre just isn’t her lane. Souljah never fully transports us into a new universe. Ironically, she actually gives too many details with her heavy-handed descriptions, which loses the essence of the new world Winter has entered. The book was too dragged out.

Souljah gives the reader all these settings seemingly on-the-nose names (The Last Stop Before You Drop, for example) where a few strange things happen, but they never actually symbolize anything beyond the obvious: Sister Souljah believes in heaven, hell and the afterlife, Winter is a lost soul caught in-between, and Allah is the ONE and all-knowing. These were very basic, albeit timeless, concepts. However, there was nothing refreshing or new about Souljah’s approach. She had an opportunity to create a “hood matrix” to illustrate the meaning of life and the search for truth through Winter’s experiences, but she fumbled. Badly. Her symbolism was very surface level and juvenile. The spiritual and story references weren’t as deep as she probably thought they were, and it shows. 

In addition, due to the strong religious sentiments, Life After Death became very preachy. The entire message is that life is meaningless unless you believe in Allah, or the ONE. That premise alone can put a lot of readers off (especially if they adopt another religion). These are topics you really have to write with a small spoon, but she just shoved it down your throat. In so many words, the reader is meant to believe that being Muslim and worshipping Allah is the key to a good life, and that worshipping anything or anyone else is evil and how you received the eternal fire. Yikes.

Life After Death also heavily criticizes abortion by calling it “murder” and demonizing the women partaking in it. Souljah even dedicates an entire army in the afterlife called UBS – which stands for Unborn Souls whose mothers aborted them – to save their mothers’ souls. Abortion is also another touchy subject that needed a softer touch in this writing.

Winter spent over half the book following the devil’s son (whose name was Dat Nigga – huh?) around like he was her husband. It gave me strong brainwashed vibes. It’s as if Souljah was making Winter slow on purpose to show a point, even though it didn’t make sense for her character. She’s praising some man even though she knows he is the devil’s son (Lucifer 66, or Dat Nigga). I immediately regretted not putting this book down when the sex scenes with Dat Nigga began. This escalated to very disturbing bestiality. These scenes are vomit-inducing, and don’t have a deeper meaning being illustrated.  

Moreover, Winter spent more time as an animal spirit than herself. This is because every time she has sex with Dat Nigga, she becomes a different animal. She’s just doing it just to do it. The motivation – other than wanting sex – is not there. If you a “dead bitch” – as she says every other page – why are you worried about sex if you’re not even worried about food? Your “body” doesn’t even need it.  This side story goes nowhere. There was no insight to what was going on in the physical world while she was dead, either. 

The worst part of Life After Death was how much the writing and narration deviated from the first book.  Winter became a shadow of her old self, and I’m not sure if this was because she spent fifteen years in the pen or not. But I wished the book would’ve pressed more into how she changed. In this book, she barely expressed one single emotion. She even seemed a little younger and used the same phrases over and over like she was a child (“I’m top bitch,” “I’m an action bitch,” “a dead bitch can’t do that,” etc.) She sounded more mature at eighteen years old than she did as a supposed thirty-three year old.

The writing style was horrendous, and it sounded like a horny middle school-aged sociopath could’ve written it. That whole ghostwriter theory (eg. Souljah not writing The Coldest Winter Ever) isn’t sounding too far-fetched. Winter became a caricature, ignorant, and unlike the character we knew and loved. 

If you were looking for the same raw passion and action that surrounded its predecessor, you will be heavily let down. Life After Death is slow-paced, random, overly religious, and just odd. It doesn’t have any of that same fire that its predecessor possessed. I don’t see this follow up novel having the same impact. 

The ending was awful, and unusually corny. Her family relationships are never resolved. The so-called “happy” ending had no emotion. The author tells us a lot, but never takes us on the adventure with her. I wanted to feel the joy and pride Winter seemed to have felt when she woke up. Also, we saw the original characters hardly at all. Where are they now? What happened to everyone? The reader will have to deal with new random characters – who are also dead – in a plot that didn’t know where it wanted to go and a message that tried its hardest to be deep, but was really just as shallow as Winter herself.

And what the hell happened to Midnight in this novel? He doesn’t make an appearance in this novel at all, and it really got my hopes up. I always saw Midnight ending up with Winter when she got her shit together. After all, he already had multiple wives, why couldn’t Winter be one of them? 

Well anyway, it’s a public consensus that everyone wanted Winter with Midnight, an early release, a bullet for Bullet, and a true happily ever. Winter was selfish, but she was also a teenager. Why couldn’t she have her fashion empire after serving FIFTEEN years for a crime she didn’t even commit? There was no redemption here. What Souljah gave us was a cop out for her misogynistic, judgmental views that she somehow covered up in the first book. 

Life After Death was NOT a sequel for Winter. Souljah used this book as a strategically placed vessel; Souljah used this book to air out her own polarizing, religious rhetoric. There is too much of Souljah’s opinions in this book, and not enough of Winter’s. As an author, this is one of the biggest errors one can make.

She seems to understand that on a theory level, but not in practice. Because she even says this in an interview with Shondaland: “But I think one of the things a person who aspires to be a great writer has to do is they have to be able to separate themselves from the characters to give their characters authenticity. If you can’t separate yourself from the character, it’s like getting on your own soap box or a pulpit or something like that. And I don’t think that’s an author’s job.” She did the opposite of her own beliefs.

I had to throw this book on the floor when I finished it. That’s how much I did not like it. You may feel differently.

Life After Death can purchased here.

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