Sonny White's Urban Fruit Manuscripts

About the Book

Sonny White's Urban Fruit Manuscripts were almost forty years in the making. Growing up in Detroit was exciting, sad, adventurous, funny and at times, hopeless. Reading the books of authors like Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines inspired me to mimic their writing styles and try to give an authentic account of the Detroit experience spanning the the 70's, 80's and 90's. I grew tired of watching my city portrayed inaccurately by individuals who hadn't been exposed to the streets. I was just entering my teenage years as the 70's came to a close. During this period, the Young Boys Incorporated street gang captivated youngsters throughout the city as they sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of heroine per week. This fascinated me and led me to reflect back on this period when I began writing. I was in a position to know several Y.B.I. members personally and got to see their expensive cars, Max Julien leather coats and Top Ten Adidas gym shoes up close. Just as then first lady Nancy Reagan and the government were declaring war on the Young Boys and driving them to the verge of extinction, crack cocaine was making its way into every major city in the country. The drug hit particularly hard in Detroit. The early eighties saw drug dens called crack houses emerge all over the city. Youths began scrambling to secure jobs as joint workers in these illegal enterprises. No one can dispute the fact the job paid well. Unfortunately, going to jail or being murdered were frequent hazards of the job. There were alot of casualties in the drug game, but alot of people amassed considerable fortunes over the course of the mid eighties. By the early 90's, alot of the joint workers of the early 80's were now running independent companies of their own. This is what was commonly called "moving weight", meaning these up and coming entrepreneurs specialized in supplying cocaine to the thriving crack houses instead of working in them. This was a much more romantic job and was alot more prestigious. Also, because this job dealt with a lot of weight, it also brought stiffer prison sentences. Stiffer prison sentences meant more cooperation with the authorities, which meant even more jail time. By the end of the 90's, most of the movers and shakers of the 80's had been wiped out. Even now, though, there are those who toil on the mean streets of Detroit trying to duplicate the success of the Young Boys or the founding fathers of crack that thrived throughout the 80's. I have always been an avid reader and a big fan of history. I have read hundreds of biographies, ranging from Wyatt Earp to Elvis Pressley, as well as individuals like J.Edgar Hoover, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sam Giancana. I'm also a big sports fan. I've read books about Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, Julius Erving, Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe and countless others. I've also studied Hitler, Stalin, Socrates, both World Wars, the Civil War, the Korean War, the Romans, the Aztecs and anything else I found stimulating that was available. I would like to think these readings have influenced my writing style and content. I would never like to be perceived as a one dimensional writer who can only tackle material involving drugs and violence. I plan to engage many other topics like race, religion, history, civil rights, romance, even comedy. However, I felt it was my duty to me as well as my fallen comrades to tell what really has been happening on these streets over the course of the last thirty years or so. Hopefully, alot of questions will be answered by reading Sonny White's Urban Fruit Manuscripts and maybe some youth will be spared the tragedies so many of my fictional characters experienced because of bad life choices. I owe it to legends like Darrell Chambers, Johnny Ace, Dean Parker, Seven Mile Jeff, Ollie Gotti, J Pyner, Paper Boy, Bruiser, Nardy Johnson, the Johnson family on the number streets and all the other countless street figures who sh

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