Southland

Southland is a 2003 crime novel written by Nina Revoyr. The award-winning novel is her second; her first novel is The Necessary Hunger. Revoyr was born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and a Polish American father and is known for her engaging prose about aspects of Los Angeles that often go unseen. In Southland, Revoyr addresses themes of racism, redemption, justice, and family while telling the story of a forgotten neighborhood. Revoyr weaves details of World War II, the horrors of the concentration camps established for Japanese Americans, and the tragedies of the Watts Uprising into the narrative as well, underscoring the various forms of damage that arise from misunderstandings rooted in racism.

Content Warning: This guide and the novel include depictions of racism and racist violence, including violence by police and violence against minors.

Plot Summary

After a Prologue that explains the downfall of Angeles Mesa, an old neighborhood in Los Angeles near the Crenshaw district, the narrative introduces the protagonist, Jackie Ishida. Jackie is a Japanese American woman in her last semester of law school. Her grandfather, Frank Sakai, has recently passed. When she visits her aunt Lois one day, she’s tasked with identifying Curtis Martindale, the man to whom Frank has left his now-defunct store. Jackie must also figure out what to do with the $38,000 in cash Frank has stored in his closet.

Jackie doesn’t want to get involved in finding Curtis—she’s preoccupied with her relationship and with the prospect of a new position in a high-profile downtown law firm. However, she feels guilty for having grown apart from her grandfather and wants to honor him in some way. She finally agrees to track down Curtis, not knowing that doing so will unwittingly uncover Frank’s secret past: Curtis is Frank’s illegitimate son.

Jackie soon meets James Lanier, a young Black man working at the Marcus Garvey Community Center in Crenshaw. Lanier loves his neighborhood, despite its rough reputation. Jackie learns that Lanier is Curtis’s cousin and that Curtis and three other boys died in the meat freezer of her grandfather’s store during the Watts Uprising. Lanier explains that those responsible for the murders have not met justice, as no one ever reported the deaths. Now that Jackie has arrived with the intent to reconcile the past and present, Lanier thinks he finally has a chance to avenge his cousin’s death. Lanier maintains that a racist white police officer named Nick Lawson killed the four Black youths. Jackie and Lanier then commit to exposing Lawson’s guilt as a way to honor both Curtis and Frank.

As they track down key characters from the old neighborhood, Jackie and Lanier discover the truth: Officer Robert Thomas, a Black man, killed the four boys during the Watts Uprising. As Jackie and Lanier struggle to grasp Thomas’s extreme internalized racism, both question how their own biased beliefs have affected their lives. Although Thomas’s conviction remains inconclusive at the novel’s end, Jackie and Lanier reconcile their respective losses with the hope of a criminal case against him. Their pursuit of justice has not been in vain, and the journey for redemption has brought them both closer to their families as well as to each other.