This image is the cover for the book Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice, Stevie Stevenson

Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice, Stevie Stevenson

Stevie Stevenson graduates from college and embraces the liberating California lifestyle in award-winning author April Sinclair’s follow-up to her “vivid and brilliant” (San Francisco Review of Books) debut novel Coffee Will Make You Black

Growing up black in 1960s Chicago, Jean “Stevie” Stevenson came of age amid the tumult of the civil rights movement, learning to value not just her race and gender but her sexuality as well. Now, nearly a decade later, Stevie is a college graduate enjoying a week of vacation in San Francisco. After getting a taste of the bohemian life, she can’t bring herself to return home to her family and journalism career in Chicago. Instead, she’s determined to spread her wings and discover her true self, experimenting with free love, gay pride, and vegetarianism; forging a friendship with a gay disco queen; and taking a job at the feminist Personal Change Counseling Center. As she falls in and out of love, Stevie takes time to observe both the absurd and the liberating qualities of the West Coast hippie lifestyle—and is constantly reminded that the journey to self-discovery likely has no end point.

Written with the same bright wit and endless charm that made Coffee Will Make You Black such a beloved book, Ain’t Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice is a delightful continuation of Stevie’s story that was hailed by Salon as “ripely funny, unpretentious, and sincere.”

April Sinclair

April Sinclair is the acclaimed, award-winning author of three novels. Her debut, Coffee Will Make You Black, was named Book of the Year (Young Adult Fiction) for 1994 by the American Library Association, and it received the Carl Sandburg Award from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library. The sequel to Coffee Will Make You Black, titled Ain’t Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice, was published in 1995 followed by the novel I Left My Back Door Open. Sinclair has been a fellow at the Djerassi, Yaddo, MacDowell, and Ragdale artist colonies. She worked for fifteen years in community service programs, and has taught reading and creative writing to inner-city youth. Born and raised in Chicago, she currently lives on an island connected by bridges and a tunnel to Oakland, California.

Open Road Integrated Media