Tervalon, Jervey 1958–

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Tervalon, Jervey 1958–

PERSONAL: Born November 23, 1958, in New Orleans, LA; son of Hillary (a postal worker) and Lolita (a key punch operator) Tervalon; married Gina Harris (a personal analyst); children: Giselle. Educa-tion: University of California, Santa Barbara, B.A., 1980; University of California, Irvine, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Office—English Writing Department, Occidental College, 1600 Campus Rd., Los Angeles, CA 90041. Agent—Sylvi Brown, S.C. Brown P.R., 1122 N. Robertson Blvd., Ste. 15, Los Angeles, CA 90035.

CAREER: Taught in the Los Angeles public schools during the 1980s; University of California, Santa Barbara, instructor in literature, 1992–96; St. Mary's College, Moraga, CA, instructor, 1996; Occidental College, Remsen Bird Writer-in-Residence.

AWARDS, HONORS: New Voices Award, Quality Paperback Book Club, 1994, for Understand This; Disney screenwriters fellowship; University of California, Irvine, fellowship; Golden Crown Award, Pasadena Arts Council; Oakland PEN award.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

Understand This, Morrow (New York, NY), 1994.

Living for the City (stories), Incommunicado Press (San Diego, CA), 1998.

Dead above Ground, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 2000.

All the Trouble You Need, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Lita: A Novel (sequel to Dead above Ground), Atria Books (New York, NY), 2003.

(Editor, with Gary Phillips) The Cocaine Chronicles (short stories), Akashic Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Work represented in anthologies, including Absolute Disaster: Fiction from Los Angeles, edited by Lee Montgomery, Santa Monica Review, 1996; contributor of short stories to periodicals, including Spectrum, Details, and Statement; contributor of articles to periodicals, including L.A. Weekly.

SIDELIGHTS: Novelist Jervey Tervalon was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, but moved to Los Angeles, California, with his family when he was a young boy. Both parents encouraged him to enter college when the time came. After he obtained his bachelor's degree, he taught English at a disadvantaged high school in Los Angeles. The things he saw there touched him deeply, and he was especially affected by the murder of a good student who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tervalon left high school teaching to return to college in pursuit of a degree in creative writing. While there, he began writing a novel inspired by his experiences and observations as a teacher. The book served as his master's thesis and was published to much acclaim under the title Understand This.

Understand This begins with a murder. Although the novel is narrated by eight different characters, one of the most important is Francois, a young African-American in his last year of high school. Shortly after he finishes playing football with his friend Doug, Doug is shot and killed by his drug addict girlfriend, who is pregnant by him. Understand This then goes on to present the effects of this killing on Francois, Doug's brother and sister, the killer, and others. Narrators of the story also include Margot, Francois's girlfriend, whose grades and determination will enable her to leave the Los Angeles ghetto through college, Francois's mother, a nurse who is determined to move her family to relative safety in Georgia, and Michaels, a caring high school teacher who is quickly reaching the point of burnout and leaving the students who desperately need him.

Understand This met with a great deal of praise from critics. Bob Sipchen in the Los Angeles Times Book Review applauded the novel's differences from more typical stories of African-American, urban poor affected by violence. "Shrugging off the de rigueur overlay of rage and recrimination, resisting the peer pressure to posture macho, [Tervalon] is freer to flex his wit, work out his fine observational skills, and inject his warmth into the yarn," wrote Sipchen. He went on to laud the author as "daring," and explained that Understand This "explores more difficult landscape—geographic and interior—than many of its angrier and grittier brethren." This comment fits with what Tervalon himself emphasized about his novel to Dennis McLellan in the Los Angeles Times. "We rarely talk about the internal psychology of these kids. We kind of ignore it and think only of the external. Sometimes there's fear and depression," he added, "but you don't see it. You just see the veneer of a kid that's unscarred, but inside they're suffering." McLellan called Understand This "a gritty tale."

Alison Baker, discussing the novel in the Washington Post, commended it as well, judging that "Tervalon succeeds in his larger mission, which is to show us this particular way of American life." She went on to observe that "good literature has no agenda; it's not propaganda. Tervalon offers no 'solutions.' He's given us a portrait of people who live in a certain world at a certain time and do the best they can." Baker concluded that "Understand This is perhaps less an order than a plea."

Tervalon followed with Living for the City, a collection of related stories about young, black teens living in Los Angeles, some of whom succumb to the world of violence and drugs in which they live, and the few who manage to survive relatively unscathed.

Dead above Ground is set in New Orleans. The narrator is Lita Du Champ, a Creole teen trying to survive in a dysfunctional family. Booklist reviewer Bill Ott felt that "Tervalon has the steamy, postwar New Orleans ambience down pat." The young woman is an adult when she returns in Lita: A Novel. Lita is married and the mother of two children. Living with them are Lita's twin sisters, Ada and Ava, and her cousin Richie. The younger family members are a trial to Lita, and they ultimately tell her their secret story of revenge on behalf of Lita's mother.

In All the Trouble You Need, Tervalon explores the life of Jordan Davis, a black man who lives in Santa Barbara and who has a foot in each of two worlds, one black and one white. Into his worlds come two beautiful women, one black, one biracial, and Jordan must choose one. Robert Ito wrote in Los Angeles Magazine that "Tervalon's forte … is dialogue…. Fans of Tervalon's tales of South-Central will recognize his sly wit … and fine sense of comic timing."

Tervalon and Gary Phillips coedited The Cocaine Chronicles, a collection of seventeen stories about that drug, two of which are written by the editors. The stories are categorized in sections that deal with addiction, corruption, dealers, and death. "None of the stories glamorize cocaine," noted a Publishers Weekly critic, "but some do exhibit what the editors call 'scary charms.'"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 2000, Bill Ott, review of Dead above Ground, p. 880; June 1, 2003, Kevin Canfield, review of Lita: A Novel, p. 1746.

Essence, February, 2000, Martha Southgate, review of Dead above Ground, p. 74.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2003, review of Lita, p. 642; March 1, 2005, review of The Cocaine Chronicles, p. 255.

Los Angeles Magazine, May, 2002, Robert Ito, review of All the Trouble You Need, p. 100.

Los Angeles Times, April 4, 1994, Dennis McLellan, review of Understand This and interview with Tervalon.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 20, 1994, Bob Sipchen, review of Understand This, pp. 2, 7.

Publishers Weekly, November 23, 1998, review of Living for the City, p. 61; April 29, 2002, review of All the Trouble You Need, p. 44; July 7, 2003, review of Lita, p. 53; March 14, 2005, review of The Cocaine Chronicles, p. 49.

Washington Post, April 7, 1994, Alison Baker, review of Understand This, p. C2.