Understand This (California Fiction) [Paperback]

Jervey Tervalon (Author), Richard Yarborough (Foreword)

Book Description

Series: California Fiction | Publication Date: October 2, 2000

Jervey Tervalon's novel about young people in South Central Los Angeles grows out of his experience teaching in a high school there and his pain at the death of one of his favorite students.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Tervalon's graphic, vividly realized debut about two high school students in South Central Los Angeles was awarded QPB's New Voices Award for 1994.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (October 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520223551
• ISBN-13: 978-0520223554
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,310,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jervey Tervalon(fiction) was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, but moved to the Jefferson Park/Crenshaw area of Los Angeles, California, with his family as a young boy. He attended the University of California at Santa Barbara where he graduated with a BA in Literature. He received his MFA from UC Irvine where he studied with Thomas Keneally and Oakley Hall. His thesis project became the novel Understand This for which he won the 1994 New Voices Award from Quality Paper Books was based on his experiences teaching at Locke High School. He's had four novels and a collection of stories and two anthologies and numerous short stories, essays and articles published. His most current publication is "Golden: The Education of a Young Pootbutt,"in Slake Magazine, published in July 2010.

Literary L.A.
David L. Ulin
published: February 12, 1998

JERVEY TERVALON sold his first poem to Scholastic magazine while he was still in junior high school. "'My God,'" the Pasadena resident remembers thinking, "'I can make money at this.' And I've been deluded ever since." Raised in Los Angeles, he attended Dorsey High School and UC Santa Barbara, where he wrote stories about his neighborhood, publishing them in "little magazines that no one reads." After graduation, Tervalon taught at Locke High School before entering the MFA program at UC Irvine; there, he returned to a work in progress about South-Central that ultimately became his first novel, Understand This. Although the book won a Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award in 1994, Tervalon has been stymied in his attempts to publish subsequent work - his second novel was bought but never issued, and a third book is circulating now. "Most publishers," he says, "feel like they can't lose money underestimating the intelligence of the black reader, and there's no one out there to balance their preconceptions, and prove they're wrong. It's especially hard coming from Los Angeles,

Honors, Awards: Disney Screen-writing Fellow, 1992; Quality Paper Book Club's New Voices Award, 1994; Finalist, Discover New Writers/Barnes and Noble Award, 1994; Honorable Mention, Pushcart Prize, 1996; Gold Crown Award from the Pasadena Arts Council, Remsen Bird Artist in Residence, 2001;. Josephine Miles National Literary Award for Excellence in Multicultural Literature, 2001; California Arts Fellowship, 2003.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tough and tender romeo and juliet survive in the 'hood, October 13, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Understand This (Hardcover)

UNDERSTAND THIS is a classic book for the 90's, a thoroughly modern re-telling of ROMEO AND JULIET. But this time, instead of the Montagues and the Capulets, we've got rival gangs in south central, unwed moms, and some damn good dialogue. Tervalon has a strong voice and his characters shine with the kind of authentic alive-ness that many writers strive for, but few realize. UNDERSTAND THIS sets a tone for inner-city romance. It's not enough to chronicle, one must create art. Tervalon does this, and does it well. We don't feel sorry for anyone in this novel, we don't patronize, and we don't pity. What we do by the end of the novel,as we turn the last page, is what Tervalon hoped, and he succeeds brilliantly. We understand - this. Just a little bit better.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderously various perspectives by a brilliant writer, July 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Understand This (Paperback)

Tervalon can write. There's not a sentence that doesn't fit. Every word is in exactly the right place and contributes to the whole, and yet the writing is so restrained and understated that you have no sense of the author's presence, but only of his many, extraordinarily vivid characters. The plot is the least interesting part of the book, but still it hooks you. The book, like life, has its melodramatic moments, but also moments of humor and lots of sympathetic insight into a host of interesting people trying, with varying degrees of success, to make the best of their lives. The abiding feeling left by the book is not the cliched angst of urban hopelessless, etc. etc., but something far more positive and difficult to describe, because the world of this book is far too complex and finely-drawn to be summarized in any string of adjectives. A terrific book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid Debut About Life in South Central, March 1, 2005

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Understand This (California Fiction) (Paperback)

Tervalon grew up in South Central LA and taught high school in Watts, so it should come as no surprise that his 1994 debut novel set in the same milieu is a gripping polyphonic work that rings with authenticity. Eight different narrators alternate over fifteen chapters to bring to life the problems of growing up in the 'hood in story bookended by shootings. The book starts with teenage football player Francois tossing a football in the street with his old friend turned dealer Doug, who is promptly gunned down by his girlfriend Rika. The first three chapters follow Francois and his tough-as-nails, straight-talking girlfriend Margot, as he struggles to deal with the murder and avoid Doug's brother Ollie, who's intent on revenge.

Chapter four shifts to Francois and Margot's English teacher Michaels, a figure who appears to be modeled on Tervalon and provides the first adult view on these struggling kids. Next chapter is Ollie, whose efforts to step into his big brother's shoes as player/dealer are quickly squashed. Francois's mother Ann steps in to provide the perspective of a long-despairing mother trying to keep her kids on the right path, but without a too much conviction. Crackhead Rika appears next, and is shown to have quickly shed her privileged background to become be a hardened femme fatale figure. Unfortunately, her backstory feels rather incomplete, and as she's a pivotal figure in the narrative, it's a pity Tervalon didn't devote a little more time to her story.

The story then shifts back to Francois and Margot, whose stormy relationship appears to be destined to wreck upon the imminent shores of Margot's departure for college at UC-Santa Cruz. She details a one-week orientation trip up there that might as well be to a foreign country for its strangeness. Meanwhile, Francois dabbles in the drug trade up in Santa Barbara with his shady friend Tommy, who narrates the next chapter. Tommy isn't a particularly distinctive figure, and his voice feels somewhat similar to the braggadocio of Ollie. Francois returns to Los Angeles, where Ann picks up the story again, having decided to move to Atlanta. She struggles with Francois' inexplicable (to her) depression and refusal to go to school and graduate.

Ann calls in Michaels, who half-heartedly tries to convince Francois to finish school up in the subsequent chapter. in the latter part of this, Michales meets up with Margot and shares an awkward dinner with her. He has a weird, uneasy attraction to Margot the whole book which is never fully articulated and feels kind of forced. Francois returns to explain his new setup as the manager of a check-cashing store for another dealer and his final date with Margot, escorting her to Michaels' wedding. Things take a turn for the melodramatic when Ollie's sister Sally appears to reveal the discovery of Rika as a pregnant homeless woman. Sally is a fierce Christian who doesn't take any backtalk from Ollie and comes across as a younger, firmer version of Ann. She and Ann attempt to help Rika out, until a final climactic shooting. The coda is provided six months later by Michaels, who has left to go to law school, but returns to meet up with Margot after her first semester of college.

Overall this is a very impressive debut, although it might have been strengthened by sticking with fewer narrators. Michaels could have been fleshed out a bit more too--as the former insider, now an outside observer, he could have offered a more interesting perspective. Still, for the most part, the dialogue sparkles with reality as we see these kids struggling to operate within their highly constrained environment. A strong start for Tervalon, who has since moved into period fiction about New Orleans and is now embroiled in legal problems with his publisher.