The Jazz Owls

In the second American summer of World War II, greater Los Angeles was a hotbed of racial tension.  Navy installations were filled to bursting with sailors (most of them European-American) being trained and waiting to be sent to war.  However, the clubs and jazz joints the sailors visited were also popular with local Mexican-American youth, many of whom dressed in zoot suits.  The baggy, flamboyant outfits were widely regarded by the white community as unpatriotic since the voluminous use of fabric appeared to be a deliberate slap in the face to wartime austerity measures.  Individual fights between sailors and zoot suiters escalated into widespread riots as servicemen hit the streets by the hundreds, beating and stripping the clothes from anyone looking vaguely like a zoot suiter.

 

This book features blank-verse narratives from a number of people caught up in the riots, but it revolves around a fictitious Mexican-American family whose two daughters are ‘Jazz Owls’ – factory workers who stay up late to dance with sailors who will soon be shipped off to the Pacific Theater.  After the riots subside, we see free-spirted Marisela and practical Lorena become involved in new pursuits that push back against the barriers of race, class, and gender.