Southland, Chapter 27 & 28
Biographic Information: An English novelist born in Japan (1969- ), Nina Reyovr had been an Edgar Award finalist, and the winner of the Ferro-Grumley Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. She writes about racial justice of the past & present in the bestselling novel, Southland.
Summary:
[CH.27]: This is a story about an African American named Victor Conway, who lived in Watts or previously known as Mudtown, a small country village. The story takes place after the Japanese internment in 1942. After experiencing tribulations that came with racism in 1943, he left to Little Tokyo. He returned to Watts to reminisce what he had lost in a ghost town. The story starts out with Victor being newly married late of 1942 to Janie. He worked at a shipyard like most black men in the neighborhood. As though struggling through life with a dead end job and making ends meet with graveyard shifts was not bad enough, he was also under the oppression of white men. White people would constantly glare at him with discontent. He had to endure insults and the pestering of white people. In a community, where associating with blacks was considered more than a taboo, but a travesty; a white woman would try to seduce him, disregarding his marital status. He desperately tries to avoid her attempts because white men were breathing down his neck with fiery eyes. Her attempt to try to befriend Victor resulted in the white community’s punishment towards his love one. His wife was raped and beaten half to death because he was mistaken for colluding with the white woman. Being a black man in a helpless situation, he could not bear the shame of failing to protect his wife. He then drowns his sorrow in alcohol, and hedonistic habits; consequently, he neglected his wife and thus a broken marriage.
Eventually he was kicked out of the house, and moved to Little Tokyo