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J-Sei’s Virtual Book Club: Southland by Nina Revoyr
Join the Club, Buy the Book
Join the J-Sei Virtual Book Club and connect with others as we delve into Southland, a timely and standout literary crime novel by Nina Revoyr written in 2003. Book Club format: Curl up and read at your own pace. As you’re reading, you can comment online as it strikes you with fellow book club members on Discord or the secure Book Club webpage. Around the end of October we’ll schedule a Zoom session for members to meet and discuss the book. Sign up for the Book Club so we can be in touch. We have arranged with Eastwind Books to handle book sales. You can order Southland online at the discounted price at $14.75 and either pick up at the store, arrange for shipping or designate J-Sei for delivery/pick-up in the comments.
J-Sei Book Club Pick: Southland
In Southland, her award-winning second novel, Nina Revoyr brings us a compelling story of race, love, murder, and history against the backdrop of Los Angeles. Set in 1994, in the wake of the Rodney King riots, a young Japanese-American woman, Jackie Ishida, is in her last semester of law school when her grandfather, Frank Sakai, dies unexpectedly. Frank was a veteran of World War II who, many years before, had owned a store in the Crenshaw District, one of the first racially mixed neighborhoods in the city and now the heart of L.A.’s Black community. While trying to fulfill a request from his will, Jackie discovers that four Black teenagers were killed in the store during the Watts Riots of 1965 — and that the murders were never solved or reported. Along with James Lanier, a cousin of one of the victims, she tries to piece together the story of the boys’ deaths. In the process, Jackie unearths the long-held secrets of her family’s history — and her own.
Southland explores the fragile and sometimes painful misunderstandings that occur across the lines of race and culture. It is also the story of an ever-changing city. Moving in and out of the past, from the shipping yards and internment camps of World War II; to the barley fields of the Crenshaw District in the 1930s; to the streets of protest in Watts in the 1960s; to the night spots and garment factories of the 1990s, Southland weaves a tale of Los Angeles in all of its faces and forms.
“A story about injustice dressed up as a detective novel, Southland reminds us that activism is both an ongoing project and a deeply personal choice.”
—Vallaire Wallace, Electric Lit
Nina Revoyr was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a white American father, and grew up in Tokyo, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles. She is the author of several novels: The Necessary Hunger (1998), Southland (2003), The Age of Dreaming (2008), Wingshooters (2011), Lost Canyon (2015), and A Student of History (2019). Nina was a longtime executive vice president and chief operating officer of a nonprofit organization serving children affected by violence and poverty in Los Angeles. She now works in philanthropy, as part of an effort to improve economic mobility for low-income children and their families. Nina has been an Associate Faculty member at Antioch University, and a Visiting Professor at Cornell University, Occidental College, Pitzer College, and Pomona College. She lives in Los Angeles with her spouse and their dogs.