L&S Author Interview: Judy Juanita

What inspired you to write The High Price of Freeways?

The stories in The High Price of Freeways are set mostly in California, and three are set in New Jersey and New York City. Born in Berkeley, raised in Oakland, and educated at San Francisco State University, I was a California kid, meaning I spent a fair amount of time on freeways and in cars. At age 26, I moved to New Jersey, outside New York City, where I was stunned by the congestion on the roadways, high toll fees at the bridges and tunnels, and the pollution, stench, and truck overload on the New Jersey Turnpike.

I left Oakland in 1972 as the social revolutions of the 60s wound down and the hedonistic era of the 70s and 80s unfolded; I returned 18 years later. All along, I wrote poems, plays, essays, and fiction exploring how societal changes impact the black community. 

I didn’t perceive how strongly freeways and infrastructure undergirded (pun intended) my writing until editors and critics commented on it. Setting is a key element in literature. In 1940, Oakland's population was 3 percent black. By 1970, it was 35 percent. The expansion of the city's black population coincided with the Civil Rights era (and my first 25 years of life). Some critics—geographers and historians—assert that the peak interstate construction period in the 1950s and 1960s was a deliberate design to marginalize slum neighborhoods. The catch is that these neighborhoods were full of black people, home to black-owned businesses in cities like St. Louis, Boston, Birmingham, and Oakland. When the freeways came, the businesses shut down. BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and the mammoth U.S. Post Office in West Oakland did exactly that. Prior to BART, Oakland had a thriving blues scene on 7th St, known as "Harlem of the West." I-80 decimated black houses and black business zones. I was there. I saw these things. I lived through these events. Personal witness is one aspect of my writing. I didn’t realize how pivotal that was for decades.

The story, “The Hand,” published in Crab Orchard Review, takes place in New Jersey, as the main character, a black reporter, goes through a traumatic divorce driving all over. Her car is in the shop as the story opens with a train anecdote, trains being another passion of mine. A second story, “Lucky Day,” using the same protagonist, Ouida, delves into gender and sexual politics, family politics, intergenerational politics, and color-line politics within the black community. Even black-white interactions are emphasized, as with dialogues between a white woman landlord and Ouida, her tenant.

“Cabbie” uses the narrative voice of an Oakland cabdriver to detail actual events on March 21, 2009, when Lovelle Mixon killed four Oakland police officers. My father and mother, Albert and Marguerite Hart, owned and operated the only black cab company in the Bay Area in the 1940s. I never tired of their recounting that history. Nor did my brother, a cabbie and cab manager who invented a dispatching system for the industry. My brother’s voice provided much of the story as he lived three blocks from where Mixon and the police officers confronted each other.

Historians of 60s/70s Black Radicalism will appreciate “Huelbo” and “Waterzooi.” The protagonist of “Making Room” sees ghosts. In “Driving,” just two paragraphs long, the narrator’s poor skills at the wheel tie her to the other motorists who keep her safe. “Between General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz” is set near two key freeways in Oakland. It is the story of a luckless woman who tries her relatives’ patience one time too many.