Your House Will Pay

Alfonso Curiel is a fictional victim of a police shooting. He sets the tone of the novel early on and stands in for all the hundreds of real, unarmed Black men who have been killed in recent decades. Like Ava Matthews before him, he becomes a symbol of racial injustice in Los Angeles. Throughout Your House Will Pay, he also exemplifies what happens to many victims: They become forgotten, drowned out by the next victim of injustice to attract the attention of the media (Ray Holloway). In an early chapter, Grace is watching television when Alfonso Curiel’s mother asks viewers to remember her son’s name. This mirrors Sheila’s effort to keep Ava in the news because otherwise, she will become one of those “black girls no one’s ever heard of” (123).

Names are important in the novel. While Sheila fights to keep Ava’s name salient in the culture, the Parks have fought to erase theirs. This is because names are attached to histories. Remembering Ava’s name means remembering what happened to her, just as erasing Jung-Ja Han’s name erases her crime. The Parks succeed in their erasure (before Yvonne is shot), but Grace has never even heard of Ava Matthews. Cha suggests this is because remembering the past is much harder than forgetting it. As Grace surmises, “What else were they supposed to do? Dwell on it for eternity?” (213). It is human nature to avoid unpleasant thoughts to protect one’s own wellbeing, but this leads to the willful ignorance of social injustice in our lives.