Hollywatts: From the Promised Land to Purgatory provides an eyewitness retelling of the formation of strong and thriving Black communities in Los Angeles. The dignified and lively characters compel us to root for their dreams, honor their pride and care for them like kin. We hear on the streets of Hollywatts the drumbeats of a community filled with the desire “to live free with dignity” against the backdrop of the crushing machinations of an “ungrateful and soulless nation” determined at all cost to crush Black humanity. The book is a call to remember what was destroyed and what must be repaired.—Rev. Deborah Lee, UCC minister and Executive Director of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity

Arthur Cribbs brings the Great Migration to life with his creative fusion of a good story, part novel and part memoir laced together by poetic interludes. A saga of hopes and dreams deferred, derailed, and otherwise subverted, Hollywatts, gives the reader the feel of being in post WWII American South and West. Cribbs’ writing provides a rich social commentary that shines a searing light on the persistence of racism in American life, while holding fast to a glimmer of hope.—Geoffrey Black, former General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ

The story of Arthur Cribbs, Jr., is not a rags-to-riches story. A product of Southern California, his parents, like many others, migrated there from Memphis in search of a better life. Cribbs paints a vivid portrait of the Los Angeles that has been captured in such movies as Colors, Menace to Society, and Boyz in the Hood. Hollywatts is a page-turner that should be of interest to historians of Black Southern California history.—Dr. Judson L. Jeffries, Professor, The Ohio State University