Book Review: "The Golden Hustla" by Wahida Clark

The Golden Hustla by Wahida Clark
ISBN: 9780446178105

Reviewed by A. Jarrell Hayes

If I had to use one word to describe Wahida Clark’s book The Golden Hustla it would be inconsistent. The inconsistencies begin on the book’s back cover: there is mention of an undercover cop, but the person ends up being an FBI agent; the “ruthless” FBI agent mentioned on the back cover turns out to be a GBI agent (Georgia Bureau of Investigation); the ex-partner from the back cover goes by a different name in the book until near the end. The book’s main character, Nina Coles, is described as an ex-hustler who is supposed to be one of the best in the game, but more than once she is easily set-up, duped by friends and cops, and suffers from a severe case of naivety. That doesn’t add up to top hustler status.

Before I go any further, I probably should tell you what the book is about. After bullets kill one of her brothers, paralyzes another, and kills her best friend, Nina Coles flees New Jersey for Atlanta. There, she runs into her ex named -- according to the book’s back cover -- Akil, but who is known throughout the vast majority of the book by his street name Cream. Cream twists Nina’s arm and essentially blackmails her into taking a telephone sales position at a company called WMM -- “We Make Millionaires.”

The company’s name is the company’s motto, and soon Nina gets promoted to the company’s elite sales team. She’s making money by convincing elderly rich folk with a gambler’s mentality to “invest” in business products the company sends in hopes of cashing in on a gold coin lottery. Yup, that’s the company’s "scheme." What makes it worst is that Rinaldo, the company’s owner, doesn’t mind using violence -- even murder -- to make sure he keeps making money.

All the sales associates at WMM use phone aliases, and a few times even Clark doesn’t know which name to use for the protagonist: Nina, or her phone name Alexis. How long Alexis -- I mean Nina -- has worked at WMM is also inconsistent in the book; ranging from a few months to a few years.

Every conventional story element from the street literature genre is in this book: single mother whose mother is raising her babies, check; crazy ex-boyfriends, check; boyfriend who is really married, check; sexy cop who the female protagonist falls for, check; a spoken word poem in the text, check; a few club scenes, check; male child-molester, check; etc. Some of the sub-plots work for the book, but most just seem thrown in the book just for the hell of it. Or maybe to fill out the checklist.

The sex scenes, and there are a few of them, are done pretty well. Having the shady company be a tele-sales scheme, where employees bring in $100,000 a year, is sort of comical and is sure to delight any telemarketer working for minimal wage.

In closing, The Golden Hustla needed more polishing in order to shine.

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