Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice

Stevie Stevenson #2

by April Sinclair

Coffee Will Make You Black, Sinclair's bestselling debut novel, introduced Stevie, a tough-talking, irresistible African-American girl growing up on Chicago's South Side during the time of the civil rights movement. Now Stevie returns, just graduated from college and ready to explore her new turf--San Francisco in 1971.

Genres: Fiction, African American, Queer, Historical Fiction, LGBT, Lesbian, Historical

324 pages, Paperback

Published February 28, 1997

About the author

April Sinclair was born in 1954 and grew up in Chicago during the times of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. As a young black woman during and after these times, she began to take advantage of her experiences along with her artistic talents to become an active member in her community. She has worked for over 15 years in community service programs, has directed a countywide hunger coalition, and has taught reading and writing to inner-city children and youth.

(from http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages...)

Reviews

[LVLMLeah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked Coffee Will Make You Black quite a bit, so I got this book to find out what happens to Stevie. As in the first book, Stevie still comes across as innocent as she explores her feelings and sexuality. I love this about her. If she is slighted or if people say or do offensive things to her, she asks why and lets those people know it’s not OK.

She’s also very open about what she feels, as in being attracted to women and exploring that. When she eventually discovers that she’s probably bisexual, she doesn’t want to be pinned down after she gets grief for that. She just wants to be who she is.

I love that she comes out to her mother even knowing how she will react. And also her grandmother who supports her. This is set in the 70’s when coming out as gay wasn’t a common thing, so her courageousness in doing so is commendable.

As in the last book, as Stevie navigates her world, racial issues come up quite a bit. Stevie just goes with who she is attracted to and she mixes it up with white women. The trials of that is they are racist and treat Stevie as a novelty even though they think they are liberal and open minded. It’s a great representation of how white people are micro aggressive with African Americans and other POC.

And then the issue of some prejudice within the LGBTQ community about bisexuals is part of this as well. It’s minimally addressed but it does come up.

To be honest, almost all of the characters in this book are not good people. But they are also not one dimensional. Most have good and bad characteristics like most people. But they are all catalysts for Stevie’s growth and understanding of who she is and what she wants.

On personal note, there is the mirror of hippy dippy 70's CA that I had to look at. I was a hippy chick back then and I lived in CA. Most of the people Stevie gets involved with are white people who were into Indian spirituality and every New Age therapy in the books. The appropriation is off the charts awful. If you are in your 50’s and 60’s and were a hippy back then, this will bring back memories, many fond. But also if you’ve become more aware since, it will make you cringe at how selfish and appropriative you/we were with Eastern and minority cultures. This is not a bad thing.

Kudos to the narrator who read this book so well.

[lauraღ · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Child, maybe your nature is a journey, and not a destination.”

A good read, if not quite as enjoyable as the first in the series. It's not that it doesn't live up to it or anything, but I think the charm and the whimsy of the 60s slang has done all it could for me. While I still enjoyed this narrative and following Stevie as she grows up and learns some more life lessons, has a few big upheavals in her life, and navigates her new surroundings as a black woman just beginning to own her bisexuality, it just wasn't as potent for me. There are a lot of bullet-proof themes here for me, like the way it addresses racism, and especially the way it calls out the rampant biphobia that has always existed in so many subgroups. But I had a bunch of little nitpicks.

And see, here's the problem that arises when I don't take notes and I wait a day or so to write my review: I don't actually remember what a lot of those issues were. LOL. So maybe they weren't that notable, but I just remember there being many times when the book showed its age, and actually kind of disappointed me in the way it chose to address certain things. Again, I don't really remember the sources of my annoyance, but I just know that this didn't land as well as the first one. It's not really the fact that it was so plainspoken. Unlike the first book, I would categorise this as adult, and sometimes I did wish that the writing were a little bit more subtle to reflect that. But I mostly enjoyed the simple writing. Just not really the way the author chose to handle some stuff. Like, I really wished we'd discussed internalised racism a little more, for example.

Listened to the audiobook as read by Amber Patrick, which did wonders to improve my impression of the book, as it always is with any writing that I don't absolutely love. The narrator hammed it up a lot, but it was apt and warranted imo. I'm not sure if I'll continue the series, but this ended in a good enough place that I feel okay about leaving Stevie here.

[Bianca Bouie]

im still reading it but so far i learned to just accept being yourself.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

Some GR numbskull combined this sequel with its prequel, so I'm storing my review for the first as a spoiler down below in case the worst happens.

In any case, here I am, back five years later with the only bisexual Black protagonist I've stumbled across in pre-2000s literature. Granted, the fact that I actively seek out queer lit hasn't made me any less picky, and I'm sure there's many a work out there that pinged many a TikTok radar but ended up passing me by. Perhaps finally reading this will spur me to go a tad further in my search, as this was the kind of intersectional goodness that lets a still largely clueless white queer know that all these "new" terms they've been coming across in their coming of age have been happening since around the time they were born, at least. It was also firmly in 'adult' territory, which made it a lot easier for certain scenes to fall out in certain ways and certain conversations be as explicit as they needed to be in order to get the convoluted points of antiBlack racism, biphobia, and moving from the solid suburban to the hustling urban across in barely more than 300 pages. Long story short, I had a lot of fun, and the only killers I can think of are the fact that the book blurb spoiled the entirety of the plot, and that the book ended with a brief "She's bisexual" to explain a white woman's, well, white womanness, which is pretty fucked whatever direction you're coming from. At this point, I'm not sure if I'm going to take on the last part of this trilogy, but if I come across a copy, I may end up needing to (so long as GR doesn't play the buffoon with that edition as well).

If you're black you don't have to march to pay dues, Diane. You pay dues just by breathing.
This was an unexpectedly holistic delight. it is technically YA, but it's YA that doesn't pretend everyone had a PG/PG-13 childhood, and so it rings more true in a historical fiction sense (1960s-early 1970s Chicago, USA) than most middle/high school narratives do. It's a coming of age, but it's a real, black, and queer coming of age, replete with tackling antiblackness, queerphobia, Malcolm X, MLK, sex changes, improvement of black education, bleaching creams, and other cultural artifacts that really aren't that aged or irrelevant, even when semi-cloaked behind 60s-70s AAVE. As such, I couldn't recommend this to a child unless the parents were comfortable with it, but it would be good high school or even early college reading material if the school isn't mature enough to tackle works like The Color Purple (trigger warnings required, of course). The messages are affirming, especially the last less than clear cut stance on sexuality, which I wish I had had at the end of my high school career, painful as the associated events involved in the discovery were. In the end, this is an odd duck of young eyes and mature themes, and YA/NA would benefit, if they aren't already, as genres if more works embraced such a balance.
I can't believe they're beating white kids like that.
As someone who's in a transition state, albeit of a more bachelor, self-supporting variety, I can sympathize with Jane Stevenson's, aka Stevie's, reactions to rapid changes and turnabouts handed out from the bounds of middle school to the edge of high school. Looking back, my own trajectory could have been much worse, as a number of Stevie's experiences reflect, but it also could have been a lot better, especially with regards to my becoming aware of the intricacies of my identity and finding some, if not a lot, of acceptance for it. Either way, Stevie's bildungsroman pulls no punches, and thus I could relate to it a lot more, cuss words and fear of sexual assault and all, than I usually can to such narratives, despite my being white. It was also fascinating to view the country shaking events of Malcolm X, MLK, the Black Panthers, and associated Afro American movements as a peripheral yet ingrained facet of the landscape. It went a ways towards humanizing the narrative that is so often tossed around as a pedestal no one would dare argue with, and while it never got down into the gritty details of black nationalism vs nonviolence, one has a better sense of what the world was like back then in terms of a history that had happened and the future that was yet to come. It gives me perspective on my own problems and allows me to relax a bit in the knowledge that I'm in a safe enough position to keep doing what I'm doing and going where I"m going. Bumps here and there are likely to always be frustrating as all hell, but that's what savings and three paychecks in one month are for.

This book was a hopeful entity during an ongoing trying time. People lie and take advantage of you, the long term end results are sometimes worse the incipient beginnings, hard work is sometimes despite all past failures rewarded, and if free time is sometimes thrust upon you, it's best to take advantage of it while you can. Much like Stevie at the end of this book, I'm eager for change and nervous as all hell, and while my situation is not as sustaining as it could be, it'll suffice until I succeed in getting something more relevant. There's not many similarities between 1960s/70s black urban teenhood and 2010's white suburban mid-twenties, but the cycles of joy and anger and success and failure are all the same, as is the need for a balance between professionalism and humanization, when to withhold out of courtesy and when to confide out of solidarity. That's not a message I expected to get out of a semi-YA novel at my age, but it's comforting during my minor crisis in capitalism, and it reminds me that I need to take care of myself regardless of what my brain tells me. I just gotta work on convincing myself of that.

[Jeremy Preacher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I almost didn't read this because I disliked its predecessor so much, but it was the last book in my library stack and it's not about twelve-year-olds. It was a substantial improvement, anyway, although many of the fundamental flaws are still there.

The characters are still pretty much one-dimensional, although they're not quite as cardboard-cutout as in the previous book. (And make no mistake, this is a sequel - it's just the next five years of the same character's life.) Since it's set in San Francisco in the mid-seventies rather than Chicago in the late 60s, they tend to be hippie or queer stereotypes rather than inner-city ones, which is, well, it's different, anyway. There are still at least a few one-shot "here's a scene to show what racism/sexism/homophobia is like" that don't really fit in the narrative at all, but they're not as constant. The writing is definitely defter, which made it a more pleasant read.

It's also still a pretty formless book. The touching scene at the end is nice and all, but there's still really no plot, as such. I like plot. I know that makes me plebian. I'm not sorry.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

UGH. Love this series, love April Sinclair’s writing style. Entertaining and educational. So interesting to learn more about the queer scene in the 70s in SF, especially through the lens of Stevie – a black woman in her early 20s coming to terms with her sexuality.

Hugely recommend if you like queer media!!!

[Jessica Daniels · Rating 5 out of 5]

what i Learned so far is, to accept yourself for who you are and if you can't then have someone show you how to except you for you.

[Amélie · Rating 4 out of 5]

liked this one better than the first one. wished there was more about the san francisco years cause the college part was a bit boring!

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd give this book 3 1/2 stars if I could!! Not as great as the first book "Coffee Will Make You Black" though I thought it was still a good book. Though this book is written in the same style, tone, and even has the same main character, it is definitely a completely different book. While the first book is a coming of age story in 1960s Chicago, this one is more of a coming out story in 1970's SF... While I thought it was a little too graphic at the time while reading it (I definitely was not expecting that!), I also felt that maybe the author had a point in going into detail with some of her scenes. Stevie was living the life in the city and was definitely not just a tourist!

[Misskittykilpatrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book made me smile because it reminds of somethng I would hear my mom say while she was chatting with her girlfriends back in the day. As the sequel to Coffee Will Make You Black, I expected more from this book. It was okay, nothing spectacular. It just left me wanting more.

[Melanie Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

April Sinclair picks up right where she left Stevie, the protagonist of Coffee Will Make You Black. Stevie graduated high school in the spring of 1971 amid the rise of the Black Power movement and unspoken investigations of her sexuality. Not sure of her place in things, but certain that she doesn’t like labels or blanket statements, Stevie heads off to college in middle-of-nowhere Illinois to take advantage of a full-ride scholarship to a college with 500 black students on a campus of 20,000.

Ain’t Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice doesn’t spend much time with Stevie’s college years, showing only how the protagonist befriends two other black women and a white French woman, all residents of Stevie’s dorm. Again, Stevie’s feelings for a woman aren’t totally platonic — this time it’s the French woman — and Stevie can’t tell her black friends. She skates around whether she’s allowed to have white friends, let alone a white lover, and how the black community typically reacts to LGBTQ individuals.

While Coffee Will Make You Black has race at the forefront and sexuality in the wing, Ain’t Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice flip-flops that. Stevie points out that she knows white college students who steal all the time, but when she walks into a store, the clerks whisper, “You’ve gotta watch them, they’ll steal anything that’s not nailed down.” Later, Stevie acknowledges that her white roommate, who gets nude on a public beach, doesn’t listen to commands to get dressed. Instead, she dances. Why? Because this woman wouldn’t have to worry that anything she “ever did would reflect upon an entire race of people. She was an individual. She was white.”

And this gets to the crux of Stevie’s life. After college graduation, Steve and two friends head to San Francisco for a vacation. Realized the community there welcomes gays and lesbians, Stevie decides to stay. It’s the summer of 1975. She locates lesbian bars and women-only spaces to find out who she is. But in the end, she always wants to be herself, not a label. Stevie finds the lesbian/gay community tries to make her choose sides, just like fellow black students in high school did, when she realizes she may be bi-sexual. She admits to her new friend Sterling that she’s attracted to men and women:

Sterling smiled. “You have your reputation to consider.”

“I do?”

“Yes, you’re building a portfolio.”

“Why can’t I just be open to whatever feels right?”

“Because, then the next thing you know they’ll be calling you bisexual.”

“That’s so bad?”

“Stevie, everybody hates bisexuals. Lesbians will think you’re just a straight woman experimenting at their expense. And heterosexuals will see you as a nymphomaniac.”

Based on conversations on Twitter, I know bisexual individuals are still often ostracized, so I found Stevie’s experiences searching for identity educational.

April Sinclair captures the 1970s well, likely because she’s from Chicago (like Stevie) and moved to San Francisco Bay (like Stevie). The characters are feminist first and black second, another trait that doesn’t sit right with Stevie because it comes back to labels. People talk about “vibes,” asking Stevie to “just try and tune in to the vibes a person is putting out before [Stevie inserts her] energy into their space. . .” There are hippies and womanists galore — it’s the 70s! — who Stevie navigates.

Because Ain’t Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice explores sexuality, there are many sexual situations and adult language. Sinclair can spin a funny tale, though. It’s not overwhelmingly offensive. Stevie’s grandma, who’s more progressive than Stevie’s mother, gives Stevie advice like “if you can’t be good, be careful.” And in reference to her white afro, she says, “Chile, there might be snow on the chimney . . . but, there’s sho’ nuff fire down below.” This granny is feisty. She’s not too proper to say, “And if he cain’t cut the mustard, he kin least lick the jar.” Sure, I’m blushing (I have some grannies), but I’m also laughing that Stevie’s grandma has clever sayings that allow her to speak openly about sex.

Lastly, April Sinclair writes strong dialogue. Most authors don’t. In fact, some famous authors skip dialogue because it’s so hard. Sinclair has an ear for spoken rhythm, though. Here’s an excellent, funny example of Stevie talking to her friend’s brother, who visits in San Francisco before he moves to Alaska. The exchange begins with him, Buster:

“Why not Alaska? I need to stack up me some dead presidents.”

“So it’s all about the paper?” [asks Stevie]

Buster nodded. “I’ma be working on the pipeline, making some long green.”

“It’s gonna be cold up there.”

“That’s cool, ’cause money’s got all kinds of friends. Heat is one of ’em.”

I highly recommend Ain’t Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice, but you must read Coffee Will Make You Black first.

This review was originally published at Grab the Lapels.

[Marie (UK) · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book is utterly pointless and so devoid of events. You could read the first and last chapter and get just as much info out of it

[Inky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing after the first book. Uninteresting. Often unpleasant or depressing. Drug use.

[FlippingThePage (Natalie J) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ain't Gonna Be The Same Fool Twice is the sequel to Sinclair's Coffee Will Make You Black. The story continues with the main character, Jean (Stevie) in her college years in the early 1970s. She attends a college in rural Illinois, a major change from Chicago. She majors in Journalism, makes 3 new friends, 2 black 1 white and goes through the traditional college experience. Stevie is still on a journey of self discovery and sexual preference. She dates a few guys but still acknowledges her attraction to the same sex.

After graduating college, Stevie and her friends take a trip to San Francisco as a graduation gift to themselves. While on the trip, Stevie separates from her friends and goes out on her own exploring the city and the "lady bars" and meets a woman with whom she falls into a relationship with within her first 2 weeks of being there. She goes out on a limb and ends up staying in San Francisco instead of flying back home to Chicago where her family and a job were waiting for her. Stevie ends up losing her "virginity" to this same woman and she discovers within months of their relationship that being with a woman can be just as heartbreaking as being with a man.

Broke, jobless, and heartbroken, Stevie ends up sleeping on the couch of her male friend, (whom is also gay and a Chicago native) he helps her get back on her feet and over her heartbreak and back to life. He refuses to let her wallow in sorrow. Throughout the story Stevie keeps in touch with her family and still seeks out Grandma's advice even through all her new found sexuality in a new place, Stevie continues her best to stay true to herself.

Sinclair's writing in this novel is very descriptive and gives the reader a look into 1970s San Francisco; women's liberation, free love, homosexuality/promiscuity, drug use, the disco era, vegetarianism/veganism, yogi's, etc. I enjoyed the character variety, Jawea, Buster, and Sterling, as well as Grandma's anecdotes.

It was a good story but I think, at times, was over-saturated with sex. (maybe that was the point, San Francisco in the 70s...yeah I guess *shrugs*)Also, even though Stevie finally found a job, she never got to successfully use her degree. It's like she settled for whatever just to live the "life" in SF. I guess the ending kind of left me unfulfilled.

I would've given this book 3.5 stars but that's not an option and I didn't enjoy it well enough for 4 stars. I would recommend this book to anyone that is struggling with coming out about their sexuality, young people in their late teens and twenties that identify as LGBT, and anyone that just wants to read a good old disco era 70's tale.

[Susan Gottfried]

DNF around 50%.

Why? I'd heard such good things about this book.

Well, a couple problems. Stevie, to start. She's completely naive, to the point that it's tiresome that every last detail has to be explained to her. Every. Last. Detail. And okay, some of it makes sense. Fish out of water and all that. But come ON. The characters around her are constantly having to stop and explain. It's tiresome.

And then we have the job hunt situation. I get wanting to hold out for the right job, but she hands over her last ten bucks for drugs. Then she takes a Greyhound bus to a job interview -- and then turns it down because she has no way to get there? Let's think about this, friends. First off, she supposedly had no money. Secondly, why did she not stop to think the whole transportation thing through before the interview?

Jawea's character was inconsistent and didn't make a lot of sense. Maybe she would have if I'd kept reading, but there was a lot of WTF and "well, this is a convenient way for Stevie to be ignorant about yet another thing entirely" and yuck.

As for Traci? Toxic. Absolutely toxic. "Don't take any job! You can mooch off me until you find the exact right fit!" -- that's abuse, folks, and it's not the only time Traci is controlling.

Also, it totally pisses me off that so many of the anti-Black attitudes hold sway today and why haven't we learned a damn thing? At some point, we've got to stop being afraid of someone's skin color and start looking at their souls. I wish I'd liked these souls better.

[Diana Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the first book "Coffee Will Make You Black" and loved it. I was excited to read about Stevie's new adventures as a college student and college graduate exploring San Francisco, especially being a 22 year old college student myself who lives near SF. It was awesome to read about Stevie visiting places in and near SF that I knew. Also, it was so fun to read about Stevie's romantic experiences with both men and women. As before, I learned a lot from Stevie in this book. For example, how to speak up for yourself, how to communicate with someone what you want in a relationship, deciding whether or not to share your romantic life and curiosities with your family, etc. Wish there were more sequels. 😔

[Darcia Scates · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the book. The first one "Coffee will make you Black" was a masterpiece.This one seemed to drag on at times. However, I enjoyed her mother's character. The author vividly painted a picture of her. Overall, I enjoyed the journey Stevie took through San Francisco. I also am proud of her for taking a chance and leaving her home state. The author was a year off when she mentions Rocky coming out in 1975. I also applaud her for creating believable scenes that show the overt racism. Especially the scene outside of the Macy's store. In conclusion, the author writes well, and I will read her other works.

[Anastasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

April Sinclair is a great writer and has created a fantastic protagonist, Jean "Stevie" Stevenson. Stevie graduates from college in the Midwest and decides to celebrate by visiting San Francisco. While there, she becomes quickly fascinated by the idea that maybe her purpose isn't just to survive but to take a journey, find herself, self-actualize. She brings her down-home, down-to-earth family-inherited wisdom and combines that with new mind-blowing Bay Area experiences, to find her own balanced, open, and true-to-self view of the world.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this sequel to Coffee Will Make You Black, we follow Stevie from college in small town Illinois to new adventures in 1970s San Francisco. I think I enjoyed this one even more than the first because Stevie has survived puberty and adolescence to struggle more deeply with the issues and questions around race and racism, sexual identity, gender roles, stereotypes, and individuality. Want a taste of Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco in 1975 through the eyes of a sweet, intelligent protagonist who's just trying to figure things out? This book is for you.

[Nenya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lesbian/feminist circles in San Francisco in the 1970s! Pretty amazing to read about. Viewpoint character (Stevie) continues from Coffee Will Make You Black and discovers that she is in fact queer. Also black, female, trying to get a job (like everyone else) in San Francisco. I really like Stevie a lot; her narration is great, she pulls no punches, and she seems like someone I'd have liked to know. And the cast of characters here is pretty interesting too.

(oops, mixed up my book reviews, initially accidentally reviewed Coffee Will Make You Black in this space!)

[Jacola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Came out to be better than I thought it would be. I was a little nervous at first but I actually enjoyed the ride I went on with Stevie while she was trying to discover who she was. I always love how she never let anyone sway her into something she is not for! I also love how she didn't let her mother's view blind her of making her own choices in life! I like how she branched of and did her! All in all good book, I read Coffee will make you black several years ago and reread it right before I read this one and, I am glad I did.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

(FROM JACKET)Jean "Stevie" Stevenson is somewhat older and wiser, with some experience and a college degree-diving headfirst into the hot tub, free love, yoga, and vegetarian lifestyle of 1970s San Francisco. In this liberating new world of raised conciousness, mind expansion, and disco dancing, a soul sister with passion and daring has room to experiment with life and love to find out who she "really" is.

[Amy Ledin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as part of a book club for a class on student development theory and it serves as a nice example of a person discovery and growing into their own ever-evolving identity. Clear, entertaining writing, and great depictions of San Francisco in the 1970s. However, if you listen to the audio version of this book the voices are completely awful and it will shift the tone of the narrator entirely. I don't recommend the audio version.

[Tori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the predecessor. One of the things I liked about Stevie in the first book was that she maintained a lot of her values, but in this book, we see her transform into using drugs. I don't expect her to be the same person she was in high school, and I do believe that the first book left more to be desired, but this wasn't it for me. I just didn't relate to her as much as I did in the first book and overall didn't even like her character half as much.

[Adelina Adeyemi · Rating 4 out of 5]

i relly enjoy reading this book so far Steive the main cahracter in this book goes to coolege and meets new people who she bfreinds quicly mostly black and she has one white friend from paris who juat had an abortion they meat when they were about to fight each other and they ended up being goood friens tune in next tin=me......

[Gena Culbreath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy read. Both funny and thought provoking. As others have mentioned, the depth of the story or ultimate decision on the lead character's sexuality left you wanting more. But definitely worth the read. Leaves room for a wow factor in the follow up.

[Gerry Durisin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is better than the content Sinclair is writing about -- a young black woman’s sexual awakening in mid-70’s San Francisco. Stevie never does clearly establish (in her own mind) whether she’s gay or bisexual or hetero but she has a broad variety of experiences on the road to finding out.

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

love this author's writing. she's hilarious, story line is great! a follow up to "Coffee will make you black", its a coming of age, self story about a young woman growing up and going off to university in the mid 70s and finding herself....

[Ayesha Shamsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it ! Such a dreamy novel, it was funny, witty and full of cultural nuance at a certain time and place . It was so easy to read and I really enjoyed it. Overall it is a pretty peaceful novel and the authors voice really shines throughout ❤️

[Seven · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good read also.