Wanda Coleman Native in a Strange Land Signed 1996 Black Sparrow

Description

Wanda Coleman knew Los Angeles from the inside out. Born in Watts and raised in South Central, she wrote about the city not as Hollywood mythology but as home—complicated, violent, funny, maddening and constantly changing. Native in a Strange Land gathers three decades of essays, articles, interviews and observations, moving through race, politics, literature, work and everyday life in Los Angeles. It’s part memoir, part journalism and part portrait of a city Coleman loved without ever romanticizing it.

Published by Black Sparrow Press in 1996, Native in a Strange Land is an essential piece of Los Angeles literature and a terrific entry point into Coleman’s work. She belongs in the rough-edged L.A. literary conversation alongside writers such as John Fante, Charles Bukowski and Chester Himes, but Coleman’s Los Angeles is unmistakably her own—street-level, fiercely intelligent and written from a perspective largely missing from the city’s better-known literary mythology. This copy is especially appealing for being signed and dated by Coleman in 2002.

A signed copy of one of Wanda Coleman’s essential books—and a terrific addition to any serious collection of Los Angeles literature.