Southland

The Holiday Bowl is symbolic of a lost time in the novel: “The Holiday Bowl’s still open—although it closes now at dusk—where men came in from factory swing shifts and bowled until dawn” (9). The bowling alley is seemingly stuck in time and still retains its former clientele, with Black and Japanese American people existing in the same space. The reality of this environment shocks Jackie at first, as she never considered Black people and Japanese Americans existing side by side like this. Later, she realizes that her grandfather Frank had taken her to this very same place to bowl, therefore making the Holiday Bowl a memorable part of her own past in the neighborhood. The bowling alley is both a nod to the past, showing how people of different races get along, and a nod to the future, underscoring the possibility of multiculturalism.

The Watts Uprising, referred to as “riots” in the novel, is a motif that appears throughout the narrative and is at the root of the crime Jackie investigates: A police officer murdered four Black kids during the Watts Uprising. With this revelation, the uprising symbolizes a violent time in Los Angeles’s history, both historically and textually: “Those who got stuck in the storm—outsiders and even some long-time residents who should have known better—did not make it home unscathed.