Picture Me Rollin'

Picture Me Rollin’ is not a book about Tupac but a novel in which he serves as the main character’s guiding star. The title comes from Tupac’s song of the same name on All Eyez on Me (1996). The author is Black Artemis, the pen name of New York writer Sofía Quintero. The book is in English.

The facts

Quintero, born in 1969, grew up in a working-class Puerto Rican and Dominican family in the Bronx and studied at Columbia University. She describes herself as a hip-hop activist and writer; other novels have appeared under the Black Artemis name, such as Explicit Content.

What it’s about

Esperanza Cepeda, 24, is released after a year in prison. She went down on a gun possession charge, taking the fall for her boyfriend Jesus, who wants to pull her back into his business once she is out. Esperanza is determined to stay straight and finds herself fighting old dependencies, patterns of violence handed down in her own family, and for respect. Tupac’s music, and his own tug-of-war between the street and his conscience, run through her story as a point of reference.

Verdict

Fiction, with a thematic rather than biographical connection to Tupac. You will learn nothing new about his life; what the novel shows instead is how his music gave a generation of young people from poor neighbourhoods a language for their own conflicts. A 2015 review in the Northampton Review of Latina Books (Smith College) praised it as accessible “feminist-hip-hop-noir” that makes feminist ideas inviting rather than preachy. More titles: Books.