cupcake brown

Janet Maslin of the New York Times reviewed Cupcake Brown's book. Yall heard about this book, about this woman who turned her life around from drugs and gangs to become a lawyer.

This review somewhat confused me, as they sometimes do.

But I bust out laughing on this part (with a underlying tone of are-you-kidding-me?):

The battle for Ms. Brown's soul shows up in her prose as well as in the events she describes. Most of "A Piece of Cake" is written straightforwardly, in the articulate language of her latter-day life. She also slings the occasional, incongruous burst of jive: "They may have suspected they were getting to me, but I sho' as hell wasn't gon' show it." Instead of recapturing her earlier self, this language gives the book an air of calculation, as does its heavy foreshadowing. For instance: "There was no way I could have known of the horrible tragedy that lay ahead."

Jive? Do people still say that?