Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice

If a novel about a bisexual black woman's pilgrim's progress through the 1970s can be said to conform to the aesthetic of Norman Rockwell, this is it. Jean Stevenson, aka Stevie, the heroine of Coffee Will Make You Black, leaves her native Chicago for college in an unnamed Midwestern city. In Sinclair's cursory treatment of those years, Stevie settles in with a mixed group of friends and takes her first female lover. A graduation trip to San Francisco results in an extended stay, and she meets Traci, an attractive feminist, and moves into her extra bedroom. After the women become lovers, Traci guides Stevie through the worlds of sex, drugs and gay politics. When the relationship dissolves, Stevie moves in with Sterling, a gay drag queen. Now employed, and with new friends, she continues to explore her sexuality through affairs with Sterling's brother and a female co-worker. When her grandmother takes ill, Stevie gains some much-needed insight, leading to a resolution that ends the novel on a happy note. With the exception of Stevie and Traci, Sinclair's characters are all types: effeminate gays, militant black nationalists, etc. Stevie narrates all this with good humor. She's engaging enough, but the sunny earnestness of it all will make some readers long for at least some of the layered wit that Armistead Maupin brought to me-generation San Francisco in Tales of the City. There's a lot of self-exploration here, but it's much wider than it is deep: Sinclair surrounds everything with a nostalgic haze that does justice to neither the personal nor the political aspects of her themes of feminism, sexuality and race. Author tour. (Jan.)