The High Price of Freeways
Hardcover edition
Publication: July 2022
“Judy Juanita's stories are wonderfully weird, hilarious, heart-breaking and full of vital, pulsing life.”
— Dan Chaon
Publication: July 2022
The High Price of Freeways consists of stories, most set in California, that explore the oddity of living in a place where freedom is touted, but its costs are often hidden: abortion, rape, and childbirth form the backdrop for several stories; a pan-sexual comic gets perilously intimate with her handsome acupuncturist; three long-separated triplets reunite and somebody ends up the odd one out; militants establish a black cultural clearinghouse in San Francisco where new identities are forged. Oakland, Berkeley, S.F., Sacramento, Los Angeles — all are crisscrossed with freeways, migrants from the South, and class contradictions. When the locale shifts to New Jersey and Harlem, highways, traffic, bridges and waterways take their toll too.
for adult readers
Advance Praise for The High Price of Freeways
“Sharp, smart, warm, surprising.” —Joy Williams (The Quick and the Dead)
“Judy Juanita's stories are wonderfully weird, hilarious, heart-breaking and full of vital, pulsing life. THE HIGH PRICE OF FREEWAYS is the kind of book that strikes a gong in your consciousness and leaves you dazed with unforgettable scenes and details circling your head like stars.” —Dan Chaon (Sleepwalk)
“What a wonderful abundance of stories big and small, of characters both hopeful and disillusioned, of black life in all of its exuberance, heartbreak, and resilience. Judy Juanita writes with energy and sass, and a shrewd eye and ear. Hers is an unsentimental account of a striving world, of politics as experienced in one’s own body, and of hard-won wisdom...a joy to read.” —Jean Thompson (The Year We Left Home)
Livingston Press, 2022
ISBN-13 (hardcover): 978-1-60489-319-9
ISBN-13 (trade paperback): 978-1-60489-318-2
ISBN-13 (e-book): 978-1-60489-320-5