62 pages • 2 hours read
Nina RevoyrSouthland
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Pervasive Effects of Racism in America
Racism is a major theme in the narrative, and one that takes on surprising dimensions by the novel’s end. The main plot revolves around four Black boys killed by a police officer during the Watts Uprising in 1965. Officer Thomas, with his own internalized racism fueling him, locked the boys inside of a meat freezer and left them to die. The community at the time knew that racism had a part to play in the murders but refrained from reporting the crime to either the media or the police—evidence of the pervasiveness of racism, as the community did not believe the boys would get justice. Although the murders took place during the 1965 uprising, the deaths take on renewed significance in the ‘90s when one of the main characters, Jackie Ishida, attempts to locate Curtis Martindale. When Jackie meets Lanier, she learns about the murders, which Lanier blames on a racist white cop named Nick Lawson. Though Lawson’s actions make him appear to be a likely perpetrator, the reality is more surprising and even more indicative of the pervasiveness of anti-Black racism: These racist attitudes are so all-encompassing that they hold sway even within the minds of some Black people, including Officer Thomas, whose internalized racism led him to murder the boys.
The circumstances surrounding the boys’ murder reveal the complex mechanisms through which racism may operate. Though not directly responsible for the boy’s deaths, Lawson is a violent and racist officer who repeatedly beats Curtis, and his racism initiates the sequence of events that leads to the deaths. After Lawson targets the boys, under the assumption they plan to participate in the protestors’ destruction, he corners them inside Frank’s store. When Thomas locks them in the freezer to die, he is acting on his revulsion at their vulnerability, which is a painful reminder of his own vulnerability. Lawson sees the boys as less than human, and Thomas hates them for being seen this way, as it reminds him that he too can be seen this way. Others mockingly refer to Thomas as “Uncle Tom” because he aligns himself with whites. As a Black officer, he faces the same racism as those he polices, but rather than feeling solidarity, he insists that he has nothing in common with other Black people. By policing Black people—sometimes violently—he aims to set himself apart from them and insulate himself from the racism they face. Unable to reconcile his identity as a Black man, Thomas turns to violence as an outlet and causes the boys’ deaths. Thomas abuses his power and position to perpetuate the cycle of violence he deems beneath him, one he associates with the “animals” he polices.
Although the work principally focuses on late 20th-century anti-Black racism, racist prejudice appears in other forms throughout the novel. The narrative dives into the past to highlight the segregation that Black people like Lanier and Curtis endured while growing up in Los Angeles. With flashbacks, the author also illustrates the racism the US perpetrated through the incarceration of Japanese Americans in camps during WWII. Many of the Japanese American characters in the narrative deal with the loss of loved ones due to this racism. Frank lost his father and sister in the camps, while Kanji Hirano lost his wife and newborn child. Southland depicts racism as a thorn in America’s side and something that the country still struggles with to this day.
Second Chances and Redemption
Second chances and the drive for redemption are prevalent throughout the novel. Both Lanier and Jackie are not only seeking justice but a second chance to right a wrong. Lanier wants to redeem himself for his cruel last words to Curtis and finally obtain justice for his beloved cousin, who was murdered during the Watts Uprising. His disappointment with himself during the investigation suggests that his guilt has been with him for a long time: “Even as he was trying to right things for Curtis, he couldn’t stop letting him down” (339). Lanier remembers playing ball with Curtis just before his death. When Curtis said he was going to check on the store, Jackie asked to go along, and Curtis told him he was too young and it was too dangerous. Lanier (called Jimmy at the time), his pride wounded, cursed at Curtis and was later horrified to learn that these angry words were the last he would ever speak to his cousin. Ever since, he has felt guilty not just for having failed to protect Curtis but also for having spoken harshly to him just before he died. This guilt is irrational—he was a child and could not have done anything to help Curtis, nor could he have known that Curtis was about to die—but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. He has held onto this guilt for decades, and only this second chance to get justice will allow him to let the guilt go.
Jackie, meanwhile, wants to redeem herself for the way she treated her grandfather Frank and reconcile the way her own internalized racism has distanced her from her family. After her grandfather’s funeral, she logs into his email account, correctly guessing that his password is the name of biracial Asian American Mets player Ron Darling. She finds that most of Frank’s outgoing messages were to her, that he’d corresponded only with his children and grandchildren, and that he’d received far fewer messages in return than he’d sent out. The picture that emerges here is of an elderly man longing for a deeper connection with his family, and of his family—especially Jackie—letting him down. This recognition causes Jackie to feel “something strong and definite for the first time since the funeral—shame” (32). Frank’s will stipulates that the $38,000 from the store should go to Curtis, and though Jackie does not know who Curtis is or how to find him, she sets out to fulfill Frank’s wishes. In doing so, she seeks to atone in a limited way for having largely ignored him in the final years of his life.
The actions of both Jackie and Lanier also help to, in a sense, give Alma and Frank a second chance. Although they can’t have a second chance at love, righting the racist wrongs done to them can help bring justice to their child, Curtis. Jackie and Lanier embark on their crusade to implicate Curtis’s killer with the underlying thoughts of redemption and second chances propelling them forward.
Community as a Source of Strength
Southland portrays the theme of community in several ways. The flashbacks describe the once-idyllic community of Angeles Mesa, a place where people of all races lived, worked, and socialized together—a rarity in postwar America. The Prologue fleshes much of this out, underscoring how people fled the hardships they’d faced in other states to settle in the racially diverse neighborhood of Angeles Mesa. The community was very open, with Black and Japanese American residents, as well as others, existing together without prejudice: “And if their neighbors spoke a different language, wore a different color skin, here—and only here—it didn’t matter” (11). Although many of the original settlers moved away or died out in the novel’s 1994 timeline, there are still those who uphold this concept of community, most notably in the interaction that takes place at Holiday Bowl.
Community is also underscored in the Black community that Revoyr portrays in the narrative. Lanier, with his after-school programs at the Marcus Garvey Community Center that work to help kids stay off the streets, embodies the spirit of community as a bulwark against systemic racism:
Lanier, like Sakai, was an insider. It was his business to know the neighborhood, to be aware of which people were harmless; which kids were on a dangerous course he needed to try and disrupt; which kids were already lost. He lived and breathed Crenshaw, always had (61).
Even as discrimination and disinvestment rob the predominantly Black neighborhood of Crenshaw of economic opportunity, propelling young people down harmful paths, the community works together to make up for the resources the neighborhood lacks. On several occasions, Lanier takes Jackie to functions in the Crenshaw community, where the closeness and comradery surprise Jackie. Although Jackie’s family hails from the Japanese American community—which has also been subject to intense racism and discrimination, including the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans—she herself says that her family doesn’t talk about much of what happened in the past. Referring to a more ambivalent form of communal solidarity, Jackie notes that the Nisei community—the first generation of Japanese Americans born in the US—seemed to agree tacitly never to talk about the concentration camps that caused so many of them to suffer. The narrator does show, however, that Jackie’s relatives did take part in the Japanese American communities of both Gardena and Little Tokyo—communities that serve as repositories of shared memory and networks of mutual support.
Frank Sakai, recently deceased when the novel opens, was intent on fostering the community he lived in. Although there were those—both Black and white—who didn’t like the idea of a Japanese American man owning a store in the neighborhood, Frank always tried his best to do things for the kids in the community, to give others a chance to make their lives a little better. His store was an extension of himself, and it was something he gave to the community by its very existence: “And because of the store, the children, the company of people—even without surgery or minor amputation—his gangrened heart was beginning to heal, the grayed flesh to beat again with the color and life” (121-22). In accepting Lanier’s offer to help out at the community center, Jackie reconciles her negative feelings about her heritage and commits to serving the community her grandfather loved. In this way, Jackie can continue Frank’s legacy.
The Drive to Combat Racial Injustice
Justice is a major theme in the narrative and is the driving force behind the actions of both Jackie and Lanier as they seek to right past wrongs. Jackie feels guilty for the way she treated her grandfather Frank. When she learns that someone murdered four boys in Frank’s store, her way of honoring her late grandfather is to try to fix the injustice that occurred. At the time the boys died, there were some in the neighborhood who believed that Frank was guilty of the murders. Jackie strives to prove Frank’s innocence and reconcile her family history. As Jackie embarks on this emotional quest, she becomes sensitive to other racial injustices, such as the trafficked Thai women.
Lanier has an even more personal reason for seeking justice: Someone murdered his beloved cousin Curtis. Although he was only a child when the murders took place, Lanier lost his role model and friend due to racial persecution. Lanier, like most people in the neighborhood, believes that Lawson, a racist white cop, was responsible. However, the Black people in the community were unable to speak out and accuse an officer of the law, particularly a white man: “I’ve been carrying Curtis’s murder, all those murders, around with me for years” (66). When Jackie confronts Lanier with the past, he decides to finally right the injustice that has plagued him for so long: “He knew his burden, his sense of urgency, were heavy in his voice; he felt accused by the image of Frank there in front of him, and so Lanier eased off a little” (66).
As the protagonist digs into the past, other injustices come to the fore. Two of the major injustices that shadow the narrative are the Watts Uprising and the Japanese American concentration camps. The events surrounding the Watts Uprising, as described in the narrative, stemmed from a sense of injustice. African Americans—and their allies—were tired of a system that constantly demonized them and deprived them of resources, opportunities, and justice. This frustration spilled into the streets, with a desire for justice quickly finding outlet in destruction: “Hundreds, thousands of people now, their anger and energy stoking the fires that stoked the increasing heat” (303). This physical destruction was the result of decades in which peaceful demands for justice had been ignored, and in its way, it made those who were meting out the destruction feel like they were finding justice in their actions. As with the later antiracist rebellions briefly mentioned in the narrative, the Watts Uprising was a way to attack a system that had denied justice to Black Americans.
The Japanese American concentration camps were another major injustice. The US government of the time thought that Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and declaration of war against the US meant that Japanese Americans could not be trusted. The assumption that Japanese Americans would be loyal to Japan in the war stemmed from long-standing racist assumptions about Asian people—Asian immigrants and their descendants were often seen as perpetually foreign, a form of racism reflected in the Chinese Exclusion Act and other legislation meant to curb immigration from Asia while encouraging immigration from Europe. This thought process led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans across the United States. Thousands of Japanese Americans lost their homes and businesses and were forced to live for years in makeshift barracks in remote parts of the American West. In the novel, these injustices remain a source of deep pain for the Japanese American community even decades after the fact. Jackie considers how many Japanese Americans at the time sought to escape persecution by erasing any connection to the culture of Japan:
Old photographs and letters from Japan, paintings, records, kimonos—anything with a whiff of Japanese about it—were burned or buried, so no arrogant young soldier who’d just started to shave could come and claim they were in league with the enemy (107).
Another segment of this injustice even extended to those Japanese Americans who enlisted in the US Army and served with honor. The government considered these veterans untrustworthy upon their return from war, and the soldiers had to deal with the same horrible abuse as before. Even those who died for their country suffered unjust abuse. This injustice, coupled with the Watts Uprising, serves as the narrative’s backdrop. In exploring these violent historical events, Jackie and Lanier tie together their families’ pasts and come closer to bringing justice to Curtis as well as to Frank’s legacy.
