Hairston, though, claims to have no secret past life that contributes to his work. The scenes come from his imagination. It's just being willing to let your imagination take you to these places, because sometime they're not such good places. He can write in settings he's never seen, he says, because what he's really writing about are the people in those places. And human nature is the same wherever humans are.
Every individual has the same human capacity to evil and good.
What's really at the center of all those monologues is something that's beyond the urban setting. For instance, he says, the crackhead mother monologue isn't about crack or the social situation. It's about this sort of fatalistic sort of view of life. Most people can at least relate to the idea of not wanting to bring a child into a world that they think is wrong. He has a great sensitivity to people's behavior.