The late critic Stanley Crouch once told me that if I wanted to restore my faith in contemporary fiction, I should read Dana Johnson. So I did, starting with her story collection Break Any Woman Down, where I met the unforgettable character Avery, a working-class Black girl turned artist, who returns to center Johnson’s novel, Elsewhere, California. Avery is a Gen Xer, a code-switcher; she is vibrant and complex. This is especially the case in Elsewhere, California,
