Winner of the Quality Paperback New Voices Award, 1994
Jervey Tervalon teaches English at California State University, Los Angeles. His most recent novel is Dead Above Ground (2000).
""Understand This" speaks convincingly in the idiom of the street, weaving in and out of several characters' stories, the dramas behind them described with intelligence and charity."--Michael E. Ross, "New York Times Book Review"
""Understand This" speaks convincingly in the idiom of the street, weaving in and out of several characters' stories, the dramas behind them described with intelligence and charity."--Michael E. Ross, "New York Times Book Review"
Michaels, a gifted young teacher quickly approaching burnout in a South Central L.A. high school, finds himself flirting dangerously with beautiful Margot, one of the few collegebound seniors in his class. Margot is slowly pulling away from her boyfriend, Francois, who has become sullen and withdrawn following the senseless murder of one of his closest friends. Margot hopes the University of California at Santa Cruz will be her ticket out, but on a campus visit she reacts to its privileged ambience by exaggerating her ghetto roots. Francois, convinced that he can't provide the flashy lifestyle Margot seems to want, gives up his dream of a sports scholarship and turns instead to the quick rewards of drug dealing. Meanwhile, helpless parents struggle to preserve some degree of self-respect inside fortresslike homes. First novelist Tervalon draws on personal experience both as student and teacher in inner-city schools in this vivid updating of Evan Hunter's classic The Blackboard Jungle. Recommended for most collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/93.-- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
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