Elsewhere, California

By Dana Johnson

Book Overview

We first met Avery in two of the stories featured in Dana Johnson's award-winning collection Break Any Woman Down. As a young girl, she and her family escape the violent streets of Los Angeles to a more gentrified existence in suburban West Covina. This average life, filled with school, trips to 7-Eleven to gawk at Tiger Beat magazine, and family outings to Dodger Stadium, is soon interrupted by a past she cannot escape, personified in the guise of her violent cousin Keith.

When Keith moves in with her family, he triggers a series of events that will follow Avery throughout her life: to her studies at USC, to her burgeoning career as a painter and artist, and into her relationship with a wealthy Italian who sequesters her in his glass-walled house in the Hollywood Hills. The past will intrude upon Avery's first gallery show, proving her mother's adage: Every goodbye aint gone. The dual-narrative of Elsewhere, California illustrates the complicated history of African Americans across the rolling basin of Los Angeles.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158243784X
• ISBN13: 9781582437842
• Release Date: June 2012
• Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.6" x 8.3"