"Good literature has no agenda; it's not  propoganda. Tervalon offers no 'solutions' but gives  us instead a portait of people who live in a  certain world at a certain time and who do the best  they can. Understand This is  perhaps less an order than a plea." --  Washington Post. "In  Understand This, Jervey Tervalon reminds  us that sad tales and lost souls may tear our  hearts apart but they don't stop life from continually  renewing itself." -- Quarterly Black  Review Of Books. "Understand This explores more difficult  landscape -- geographic and interior -- than many  of its angrier and grittier brethren, pushing  readers into the minds of the sort of African-American  Angelenos that most books and movies and hip-hop  music ignore. Resisting the peer pressure to  posture macho, Tervalon is freer to flex his wit, work  out his fine observational skills, and inject his  warmth into the yarn.

A daring book." --  Los Angeles Times. "Gritty  and gripping, Understand This  marks the debut of a powerful new voice in American  fiction." -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "An urban masterpiece. a gritty, haunting  West Side Story-esque ghetto romance of  stunning violence yet overpowering beauty."  -- Philadelphia Enquirer.