Saint Solomon - Urban Fiction Writer

Saint Solomon was born Randy Brown. "My birthplace was Brooklyn, New York. In the early seventies, due to the premature and volatile nature of my father's demise, my mother moved my two siblings and me with her to suburban Long Island. Unable to provide me, her youngest child, with the ample time and attention needed to nurture me, she sent me back to Brooklyn to be raise by my paternal grandmother.

In the city, I was educated formally in Catholic schools. However, my informal education was shaped out of the uneasy mix of Black city and Black suburban experiences in my formative years. As I migrated back and forth between Brooklyn and Long Island, I could not help but notice the vast and unsettling social chasm between the two locales. Life for African-Americans so different on one rim of the canyon than the other.

Unfortunately, the lure of city life captivated my train of thought and sent me speeding into the fast lane. It wasn't long before my locomotive type personality took a nose-dive, and I found myself encased by the towering walls of the United States Federal Penitentiary located in Lewisburg, PA.

While service time in "The Big House" (euphemism for USP Lewisburg), I (increasingly in the guise of Saint Solomon) was compelled to enter into the pleasant labors of literary study. I began reading and considering books by socialist authors such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes. Assured by their heroic literary efforts, I was inspired to study and begin to practice the art and craft of writing.

My first short story, "Writing Right", was published by Short Stories Bi-Monthy in October of 1999. My second short story, "My Revolutionary Soulmate", was published in the fall issue of Struggle, a political and social awareness periodical. It was then that I decided to submit a collection of short stories for publication. I entitled the collection Uncle Sam's Nieces and Nephews. My stories are candid, and they focus on the struggles of contemporary African-Americans to define and realize their human dreams. However, I find that humor must be part of virtually every tale and that compassion for the human condition is what I want to express. Currently I am working on my fouth novel.

I am also the cofounder of Wize Eyez Enterprises, a publishing consulting service."

Uncle Sam's Nieces and Nephews
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ISBN: 0977863123
Number Of Pages: 162
Publication Date: October 21, 2002
Publisher: Saint Solomon

This collection of short stories by Saint Solomon marks the beginning of a literary career. Swallowed up by the federal prison system, this new, young author reached into his heart and soul and found a raw but compelling talent for storytelling and writing that he had not known was there. The twelve stories that poured out of his memory and experience and imagination in six to seven months, stories that he rewrote and edited time after time in forming this book, give evidence to the literary promise of Saint Solomon.

That this book was written within the walls and razor wire of federal prison places it in a long and respected tradition of prison literature. How could a first-time author, an incarcerated man, manage to maintain not simply his equanimity, but his deep sense of the amusing and the charming aspects of human life? Only Saint Solomon knows. If there is a miracle associate with this book, that unquenched, loving attitude is it. Most prison literature is gritty, political, radical, angry, scorching, and excoriating. This collection of stories largely is an exception to that rule.

At its core, this is a book of tales about African-American men and women at the end of the twentieth century, many of them youthful, how they grow up and mature and confront a wide range of social and religious and political issues. But Saint Solomon brings a sense of humanity to his writing that extends beyond a single race and a single, if critical, part of American society. Not all, but many of the stories could as well have white (or Hispanic or Asian-American) characters as the African-American ones he brings to literary life. Universal themes and predicaments often intrigue the author. For instance, in "The Virgin Marion," Marion and Tina could be students at a high school in many corners of the United States, and the problems they face and try to solve are teen-age dilemmas, not simply African-American teenage dilemmas. Saint Solomon's characters typically are located in the dead center of the human condition, not discretely the African-American human condition. That is why these stories will be of interest to not only African-American readers, but also to white and Hispanic and Asian-American readers.

In choosing the title, Uncle Sam's Nieces and Nephews, Saint Solomon pays homage to his literary idol, Richard Wright (Uncle Tom's Children). But beyond that heartfelt courtesy, it is worth noting than his writing strategy is a good deal different that Wright's. Wright wrote with the fury and pain and pride of the oppressed. One of the first African-American artists to represent the realities and hope of his people to the full nation. His short stories (Eight Men, for instance) are raw, hard edged, serious, many shocking even today. Somewhat in contrast, the great strength of Saint Solomon's writing is its gentleness, compassion and compelling good humor. He addresses many of the issues that Wright did, but he contends with them in a different way as he peoples his tales with African Americans of later generations, at a further point of Black liberation and aspiration within the American experience.

For example, the two boys in "Writing Right", Roosevelt and Thomas, are as amusing and sympathetic as you'll ever find in a brief story. Then there is Sam's predicament at the end of "Born Again and Again", one that many Black American fathers must have faced in recent years dealing with the collision of religious faiths and traditions. Nonetheless, the story ends with smiles rather than rebukes and finger-pointing. Several stories deal with Christianity. St. Peter's heavenly patter is delivered with smiles and quiet brio in the dreamlike fantasy title "Mahogany and the Book of Life". The conniving antics of Jesus, a preacher's son, coincide with conflagration (if not fire and brimstone), as a church is destroyed and restored in "Thank You, Jesus". Finally, in several of his stories, the author writes about the amusing aspects of sexual experience, and never more effectively than in "The Intersection".

On the other hand, the author does not sidestep the sobering and even tragic elements of life. These stories tell of premature demise ("School of Hard Knocks"), two-way racial scorn ("Unbridled Hatred").

A Woman's Scorn
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ISBN: 0977863107
Number Of Pages: 159
Publication Date: October 21, 2005
Publisher: Saint Solomon

An enterprising young African American author is nurturing a writing career by selling his books from the trunk of his car on a street corner in Harlem. Interchanges with his customers enliven his life and lead to friendships both casual and serious.

Several new friends are made, and the lives of the three intertwine in ways that are supportive and positive. Then, all at once, strange things begin to happen to the writer. For no apparent reason, he finds himself in compromising and dangerous positions. Gradually, but inexorably, his life spins out of control.

Just when things seem hopeless, a relative see a pattern and suggests a possible course of action that may reverse the worsening flow of his life.

Soulsearch
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ISBN: 0977863115
Number Of Pages: 217
Publication Date: October 21, 2002
Publisher: Saint Solomon

In the broadest of strokes, it is the story of a young man who has spent a year in jail now returning to his traditional, middle-class, African-American family. In prison, Matthew became Muhammad, as he was converted to the Muslim faith (much to the consternation of his shoot-from-the-lip father, Sam). Muhammad though that conversion was complete; however, it was not. He is challenged not only to come to grips with his parents, steady, loving Eve and cantankerous Sam, but to avoid letting the persona of Matthew dominate him once again. After a disturbing struggle — in which his relationship with a young woman, both moral and physical, is defined — Muhammad is successful, at least momentarily, as the novel ends.

At its core, Soul search is about young African-Americans encountering problems and figuring out ways to solve them, often in family settings that are conventional but not necessarily supportive. The novel is full of humor, understanding of the human condition, compassion for his characters, and straightforward writing. Also, like wisps of smoke, Saint Solomon's prose often is fanciful, almost fantasy-like. The counterpoint between gritty reality and the more ephemeral is attractive and inviting to the reader.

Entanglements with the criminal justice system provide a thread for the novel, but they do not dominated the story. Soul Search is not politically correct. That is, the narrative is not dominate by references to prison life and ghetto life and violence and racial conflict and hip-hop and the dangerous streets of the city (although the author knows a good deal about such topics). The novel has the prospect of reaching a broad audience, much as a sitcom featuring an African-American family does.

Related links

Saint Solomon Official Website
http://www.saintsolomon.com