Southland

The narrator uses the Prologue to describe Angeles Mesa, a former neighborhood in Los Angeles (near the Crenshaw district) that’s now “feared and avoided, even by the people who live there” (9). This is the area where the novel’s major incident (the mysterious death of four black kids during the Watts riots) took place. Although the area is now home to crime, drugs and gangs, and is predominantly black, it used to be a veritable country within the city, a place that people from all walks of life found refuge in when fleeing from economic hardships in other states. Blacks and Japanese, as well as other ethnicities, lived together in harmony in Angeles Mesa, and kids could borrow their parents’ guns and shoot squirrels and rabbits. People would commune together and watch sports, and everyone felt safe because “whatever feelings or apprehensions people had [about race] when they came, they learned to put them aside” (11). Now, however, most people have moved away, especially the younger generations. Most of businesses and houses that survived the riots now have bars on their doors, including the church.