The Coldest Winter Ever

Respect is a constant theme throughout the novel and is often defined differently according the life experiences of each character. For Winter, her dad, Santiaga, is the representation of a man worthy of respect; he has money, charisma, and a commanding personality. He goes after what he wants and gets it. In this way, Winter often looks for these same qualities in a man, and if he doesn’t have them, then she doesn’t respect them. This idea can best be seen in the characters of Sterling and Bullet. Sterling has a mediocre job and lets Winter walk all over him. Winter uses him for his apartment and car when she’s homeless, but she never respects him. Bullet, on the other hand, is rich, has a luxury car, buys Winter whatever she wants, and authoritatively tells Winter that she belongs to him. These qualities remind Winter of her father and makes her respect Bullet. For Winter, a man who earns respect on the streets earns her respect, too.

Midnight and Souljah represent the idea of respect in relation to urban life. Midnight explains how he had to earn respect: “From the minute I arrived I had to fight. Niggas disrespecting my name, disrespecting my accent, disrespecting my clothes. While holding my ground I got rid of my accent, my clothes, and even my name. I found out quick what brought respect and I schemed to get it” (349). For Midnight, earning respect on the streets is directly tied to his ability to stand his ground, make a name for himself, and adapt to the expectations of the men around him. Realistically, this means making money. For Midnight, the only way to survive life on the streets is to have a lot of money, and the only way he can do so with a criminal record is to sell drugs.

Souljah finds Midnight’s line of work disrespectful to the Black community. In her response to Midnight’s justification of selling drugs, she defines respect as placing value on the lives of the brothers and sisters in the community. For Souljah, selling drugs tears families apart and ruins neighborhoods. To earn her respect, a person must care about not just themselves, but the people around them. In this way, Winter, Midnight, and Souljah represent different ways of defining respect and how it’s earned. 

Sex plays a large role throughout the novel and is a defining characteristic of Winter’s persona. She uses sex to get what she wants, whether it’s company, pleasure, or money. In this way, it could be argued that Winter equates sex with power. In the beginning of the novel, Winter’s mom describes herself as a “bad bitch” (4), a woman who uses her beauty and sexuality to subtly get what she wants. Following in her mother’s footsteps, Winter lives by this paradigm. When she finds herself homeless and alone after her father is incarcerated, she has sex with Sterling in exchange for use of his apartment and car, all the while he thinks they’re dating. This happens again with Bullet. She has sex with him in exchange for his wealth, and she lets him claim her as his own. In these two instances, Winter thinks she is the one in control. However, by the end of the novel, it becomes clear that the men in her life are using her, thus stripping her of any power she tried to claim through the act. Not only does Sterling end up changing his number when Winter needs him the most, but Bullet ultimately abandons her and allows her to get arrested for his crimes. In this way, both men demonstrate that their ties to her were purely sexual, and they were the ones in control.

Sex is also frequently a means of exploitation. Winter and her friends first have sex at 12 years old, and it’s presumably with older men. Due to these experiences, from a young age Winter thinks that her beauty and sexuality are all she has to offer men. This can be seen when she repeatedly tries to seduce Midnight, and he repeatedly rejects her advances. He tries to show Winter that she has a brain and is capable of thinking, but she rejects his ideas and only sees herself as a carnal body. Another idea of sex being used as a means of exploitation happens when Winter attends the fake GS party hosted by his security guards. When the guards make a game out of judging each woman’s beauty and sexuality, it demeans the women and sends the signal that they are only the sum of their body. When the guard tricks Winter into thinking she’s sleeping with GS, it sends the signal that her sexuality is just a game for others to win. Both instances reveal a larger commentary regarding how young women are used and abused by the men in their lives, and how the women willingly do so by thinking they are the ones in control.