Understand This - Hardcover

Tervalon, Jervey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 068804560X ISBN 13: 9780688045609

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1994

Synopsis

An unsentimental novel depicts true-to-life characters in a south central Los Angeles community who struggle for integrity and self-respect in an environment of gangs, guns, drugs, and death

About this title

About the Author

Jervey Tervalon teaches fiction writing at UC Santa Barbara.

Reviews

The gritty reality of teenage lives in the violent caldron of urban Los Angeles is perfectly captured in this graphic, vividly realized first novel. Francois Williams sees his best friend Doug shot and killed by Doug's drug addict girlfriend Rika. Francois takes the death hard, but his girlfriend Margot takes a tougher view of Doug's demise: "Crying over some stupid-assed woman beater, some wannabe high roller, some fool that never gave a fuck about anybody but himself." Margot is tough, smart and has a chance to go to college in Santa Cruz. Most of all, Margot wants to get away from the neighborhood, and Francois is not going to hold her back--"He's not what I'm about," she tells her English teacher, Mr. Michaels. The book's strength is not what is told but the way it's told: by a handful of characters from Rika to Francois's mother Ann and from Francois to Mr. Michaels. They speak their own minds in alternating chapters of sharp-tongued first-person narration. Individually, the voices are vibrant and personal; together, they create a dizzying mosaic of struggle and despair, promise and hopelessness. Tervalon's achievement is in creating a troubling, kaleidoscopic word picture of lives, and life, in modern-day Los Angeles. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Drugs batter a black L.A. neighborhood observed by eight different narrators, ranging from dealers to do-gooders: an often eloquent first novel. It opens with a young dealer being shot dead by his crackhead girlfriend, and ends with his brother being shot dead by the same woman, now pregnant with a crack baby, but what's remarkable about Tervalon's story is its overall restraint: what's important here is not the violence but the voices--the voices of the wannabe gangsters and their molls, relatives and teachers. Foremost among them is Francois, a promising athlete who drops out of high school just before graduation because he has a chance to ``get over'' selling drugs to white folks in Santa Barbara, and has learned nothing from seeing his homeboy Doug gunned down. Tougher, smarter (and better realized) than Francois is his girlfriend Margot, who knows she must get out of the neighborhood fast to survive but experiences culture shock at UCLA's bucolic Santa Cruz campus. The slow cracking of her hard shell is beautifully done, as are the Santa Barbara adventures of Francois and his smooth, skirt-chasing, middle-class mentor Tommy. Also hurrying out of the 'hood are Francois's mother Ann, a nurse, relocating to Atlanta, and his English teacher Michaels, his idealism exhausted. That leaves Doug's sister Sally, a devout Christian, who befriends the crackhead Rika, her brother's killer, and vows to take care of the baby. Lost in the shuffle is Francois, now working for the ruthless Cowboy and presumably a lost cause. The story eventually loses its tautness to become another lesson on the evils of drug addiction; still: a fine portrayal of a lost generation denied the luxury of innocence. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The publisher is really excited about this first novel, written by a man who grew up in South Central Los Angeles and returned there to teach after completing an MFA at the University of California, Irvine. Tervalon brings together numerous characters, including the lovestruck Francois and Margot; Michaels, a burnt-out teacher; and drug addict Rika. Yet the main character is perhaps Los Angeles itself--that is, the downbeat Los Angeles of guns, gangs, and death.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 068804560X
• ISBN 13: 9780688045609
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 271