Everywhere, Overdrive

I, Melachi ibn Amillar, being a man of wealth and taste, did read Dana Johnson's novel "Elsewhere, California" (2012) in August 2012, since I had heard it dealt with a black girl who liked Led Zeppelin. Unfortunately, I find this girl also likes to talk about African-American hairstyles, modern art, and, especially, baseball. I know nothing about these latter topics, so their semiotics, if any, remain oblique to me. She is from a poor area, and goes to a better area, then to college and eventually finds herself living with a wealthy "European", all in Los Angeles. The latter sections are intercut with the earlier ones, so I am not giving away the plot. The book is in the narrative present and the sections dealing with childhood are in a black dialect, which gradually whitens out as the story progresses. The transition from life in a poor (but decent) family to a situation of relative wealth strikes me as more crucial than the racial aspects, which makes the book less programmatic than it might have been, though whether this is due to the nature of the city in particular, or the country in general, I cannot say. It is all somewhat earnest, correct and reflective, more like a memoir than a piece of dramatic literature. The overall experience resembles the watching of a ballet, perhaps portraying the release of a battery chicken, and with the sound turned down. The childhood sections are not terribly interesting, being the thoughts of a 9-11 year old, but it gets better towards the end. And who can resist the image of the blacks of West Covina bopping to the Bachman-Turner Overdrive? Certainly not Melachi!