The Necessary Hunger: A Novel

by Nina Revoyr

Overview

Two inner-city girls tackle love, basketball, high school graduation, and an uncertain future in this coming-of-age novel by the author of Wingshooters.

The Necessary Hunger follows two basketball stars—Nancy Takahiro and Raina Webber—and several of their friends through their last year of high school. For some of them, their senior year will be full of glory, and the anticipation of college. For others, however, stranded in an inner-city Los Angeles neighborhood that promises little in the way of opportunity, it will mark not only the end of their time in school but also the end of their hope.

As Nancy and Raina both prepare to leave the urban neighborhood that has nurtured them, they find themselves looking toward a future that is no longer easily defined. The Necessary Hunger is about families, friendship, racial identity, and young people who are nearing adulthood in a dangerous and challenging world. It is about sports as a means of salvation, about the nature of competition, and ultimately about the various kinds of love.

Our reissue of The Necessary Hunger includes a new introduction by Lynell George, and a new afterword by Nina Revoyr.

Praise for The Age of Hunger

“A wholesome coming-of-age novel about two lesbian high-school basketball stars, Revoyr’s debut is a meditation on consuming passion and a reflection on lost opportunities.” —Publishers Weekly

“A quietly intimate, vigorously honest, and uniquely American hoop dream: tough and tender, without a single false note.” —Kirkuks Reviews

“The Necessary Hunger is absolutely pioneering: it may be the first work by an out, queer Asian American writer to be published out of a major press AND for that work to include a major queer Asian American lesbian courtship plot. The interracial dynamics and high school sporting plot all make for an engaging work, one well worthy of retaining in print forever!” —Asian American Literature Fans

“[Revoyr’s] characters are diverse and full of vulnerabilities, passion, and drive, and it is commendable to see a gay, Asian-American, female athlete as the protagonist . . . All in all, the story is worth reading to experience the racial tensions and teenage gay love and angst in a city that is growing restless.” —The Eclectic Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617756825
Publisher:	Akashic Books
Publication date:	05/26/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	378
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Nina Revoyr is the author of six novels, including The Age of Dreaming, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Southland, a Los Angeles Times best seller and "Best Book" of 2003; Wingshooters, which won an Indie Booksellers' Choice Award and was selected by O, The Oprah Magazine as one of "10 Titles to Pick Up Now," and A Student of History, available on March 5, 2019 from Akashic Books. Revoyr lives and works in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

A wholesome coming-of-age novel about two lesbian high-school basketball stars, Revoyr's debut is a meditation on consuming passion and a reflection on lost opportunities. Narrator Nancy Takahiro, a Japanese-American teen growing up in predominantly black South Central Los Angeles, is awestruck when she first sees fellow high-school sophomore Raina Webber (who's black) play basketball. Nancy is on the team, too, and her awe develops into a minor obsession-and then a full-fledged crush. Awkward everywhere but on the court, Nancy is further flustered when, two years later, Nancy's father and Raina's mother meet and fall in love-and Raina and her mother move in with the Takahiros. The basketball action, which builds climactically, honors the split-second timing and excitement of the game. Revoyr also evokes the feel of contemporary L.A., capturing crackheads, gangbangers and car-jackings in sharp, street-smart dialogue. A handful of engaging subplots-including Raina's mother's conflict with friends over dating a non-black man-examine contemporary issues of race, sexuality and fairness. In portraying the pressure and passion of athletic competition, and all the sweetness and yearning of first love, Revoyr's writing isn't showy. Her game is more like Nancy's than Raina's, not flashy but fundamentally solid.

Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\Publishers_Weekly

A wholesome coming-of-age novel about two lesbian high-school basketball stars, Revoyr's debut is a meditation on consuming passion and a reflection on lost opportunities. Narrator Nancy Takahiro, a Japanese-American teen growing up in predominantly black South Central Los Angeles, is awestruck when she first sees fellow high-school sophomore Raina Webber (who's black) play basketball. Nancy is on the team, too, and her awe develops into a minor obsessionDand then a full-fledged crush. Awkward everywhere but on the court, Nancy is further flustered when, two years later, Nancy's father and Raina's mother meet and fall in loveDand Raina and her mother move in with the Takahiros. The basketball action, which builds climactically, honors the split-second timing and excitement of the game. Revoyr also evokes the feel of contemporary L.A., capturing crackheads, gangbangers and car-jackings in sharp, street-smart dialogue. A handful of engaging subplotsDincluding Raina's mother's conflict with friends over dating a non-black manDexamine contemporary issues of race, sexuality and fairness. In portraying the pressure and passion of athletic competition, and all the sweetness and yearning of first love, Revoyr's writing isn't showy. Her game is more like Nancy's than Raina's, not flashy but fundamentally solid. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In Revoyr's first novel, Japanese American Nancy Takahiro recounts her days as a high school basketball star in South Central Los Angeles. Soon, African American Raina Webber, a star at a rival school, and her mother move into Nancy's home. Both young women are gay, and Nancy must come to grips with feelings for her new housemate that go beyond the scope of athletics. Revoyr focuses on a number of issues, including competition, interracial relationships, and same-sex relationships. In its presentation of the challenges of living in the 'hood, her work is reminiscent of Sheneska Jackson's Caught Up in the Rapture (LJ 4/15/96). While Revoyr doesn't delve into the complexities of interracial relationships as deeply as the issues of sports and interpersonal relationships, she does question whether love can truly transcend social boundaries. A thoughtful work for larger fiction collections.-Shirley N. Quan, Orange County P.L., Garden Grove, Cal.

Library Journal

Two young women grapple with the stress of competitive high school basketball, college recruiters, their sexual identities, racism, and the interracial love story of their parents. Enough here to appease appetites for drama. (Dec.)

School Library Journal

Low-key but refreshing girls 'n' the `hood debut novel about a pair of furiously competitive basketball stars searching for love and certainty in the dank gymnasiums and mean streets of South Central L.A.

The familiar inner-city downers of racism, crime, family disintegration, and sports-as-salvation are handled with extraordinary intelligence and sensitivity in this episodic story. Teenager Nancy Takahiro, a shy, six-foot Japanese-American basketball player, lives in a small suburban tract house with her divorced father, Wendell, a high-school math teacher and football coach. When Wendell invites his girlfriend, divorcée Claudia Webber, a circulation manager for the L.A. Times, to move in with him, Claudia, an African-American, brings her daughter, Raina Webber, a ferociously aggressive basketball star who plays at a different high school that's in a different league. The two girls are not only the same age but also "members of the family"—that is, lesbian. As their parents endure racial stigmatism from former friends, what could have been a simple sibling rivalry becomes something far more complicated as Nancy becomes emotionally—and sexually—infatuated with Raina, who, though five inches shorter than Nancy, has the gutsy, American street-smart confidence that Nancy feels she lacks. Author Revoyr dodges the easy clichés of ghetto melodrama—nobody gets pregnant or has a drug problem here; everybody has enough to eat; and violence and crime, while evident, happen elsewhere—as she sends Nancy and Raina toward an ultimate confrontation in a league playoff, where Nancy's turbulent uncertainties about herself, as well as her unrequited affection for Raina, make the outcome of the game more than a matter of winning or losing.

A quietly intimate, vigorously honest, and uniquely American hoop dream: tough and tender, without a single false note.

Kirkus Reviews