April Sinclair

Chronicles the experiences of Stevie, a bookish African American girl growing up on Chicago's South Side during the 1960s

Coffee Will Make You Black

Graduating from college in 1971, the tough-talking Stevie enthusiastically dives into the San Francisco scene, where she shares an apartment with a disco queen and joins a woman's consciousness-raising group

Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice

A Novel

In her second novel, Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice, Stevie, an immensely appealing young African-American woman, is just graduating from college and is ready to expand her horizons. She goes to San Francisco with two friends as a post-graduation trip, and decides to stay when she realizes the city holds more promise for her than returning to her cramped room in her parents' house on Chicago's South Side. It was the best of times...if you knew where the party was. The year is 1975 - a time of one-night stands, disco, personal growth, and the height of the women's liberation movement - and Stevie dives into the scene. At a women's dance, she meets Traci, a cute, cinnamon-colored woman with attitude, who introduces her to yoga, hot tubs, and vegetarianism, and tells Stevie she "has enough tofu burgers in her freezer to last till we put a black woman in the White House." When their relationship becomes intimate, Stevie discovers a side to her nature that would make her mama's hair stand up. Soon, though, things with Traci go sour, and Stevie has to crash on the couch of a brand-new friend, a disco queen named Sterling. April Sinclair shows us Stevie's adventures in the go-with-the-flow atmosphere of Seventies San Francisco, with crackling dialogue and hilarious scenes that sparkle with authenticity.

Stevie Stevenson graduates from college and embraces the liberating California lifestyle in award-winning author April Sinclair’s follow-up to her “vivid and brilliant” (San Francisco Review of Books) debut novel Coffee Will Make You Black Growing up black in 1960s Chicago, Jean “Stevie” Stevenson came of age amid the tumult of the civil rights movement, learning to value not just her race and gender but her sexuality as well. Now, nearly a decade later, Stevie is a college graduate enjoying a week of vacation in San Francisco. After getting a taste of the bohemian life, she can’t bring herself to return home to her family and journalism career in Chicago. Instead, she’s determined to spread her wings and discover her true self, experimenting with free love, gay pride, and vegetarianism; forging a friendship with a gay disco queen; and taking a job at the feminist Personal Change Counseling Center. As she falls in and out of love, Stevie takes time to observe both the absurd and the liberating qualities of the West Coast hippie lifestyle—and is constantly reminded that the journey to self-discovery likely has no end point. Written with the same bright wit and endless charm that made Coffee Will Make You Black such a beloved book, Ain’t Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice is a delightful continuation of Stevie’s story that was hailed by Salon as “ripely funny, unpretentious, and sincere.”

April Sinclair

About

Books

Join the club