‘We Do All Want the Finer Things in Life’: Urban Street Fiction, Bad Girls, Black Femininity, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Abstract

This article explores the flexible application of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to the experiences of bad girl characters in Styles’ Black and Ugly (2006) and Sister Souljah’s The Coldest Winter Ever (1999), two urban street fiction novels. Although the needs levels outlined by Maslow are considered innate when it comes to human motivation, rigid application of the theory labels inferior contexts with values that are different from the individualism which undergirds the hierarchy. Flexible application, however, provides the opportunity to challenge unequal power relations, uncover latent meaning, and expand theory. When used as a framework for analysing the needs of black females in urban street fiction, unconscious primary desires emerge as simultaneous, interconnected and progressing toward self-actualisation rather than hierarchically. In addition, collectivism, which ‘implies that people are integrated from birth into strong, cohesive groups that protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty’ (Brouwer, 2009: para. 1), materialises to dominate reconfigured hierarchies, and mirroring, a process involving the awareness and contestation of images which distort black female subjectivity, emerges as a supplement to the framework. As a result, ideas concerning black femininity become fluid.