Understand this

"Good literature has no agenda; it's not propoganda. Tervalon offers no 'solutions' but gives us instead a portait of people who live in a certain world at a certain time and who do the best they can. Understand This is perhaps less an order than a plea." -- Washington Post. "In Understand This, Jervey Tervalon reminds us that sad tales and lost souls may tear our hearts apart but they don't stop life from continually renewing itself." -- Quarterly Black Review Of Books. "Understand This explores more difficult landscape -- geographic and interior -- than many of its angrier and grittier brethren, pushing readers into the minds of the sort of African-American Angelenos that most books and movies and hip-hop music ignore. 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. A daring book." -- Los Angeles Times. "Gritty and gripping, Understand This marks the debut of a powerful new voice in American fiction." -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "An urban masterpiece... a gritty, haunting West Side Story-esque ghetto romance of stunning violence yet overpowering beauty." -- Philadelphia Enquirer..Tervalon, Jervey is the author of 'Understand this' with ISBN 9780385478243 and ISBN 0385478240.