Pride and place of belonging

    Ibi Zoboi is a Haitian-American author. Her critically acclaimed novel Pride is a modern retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813), set in a diverse neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The story follows Zuri Benitez, a proud Afro-Latina teenager, as she navigates gentrification, family dynamics, and a complicated romance with her wealthy new neighbor, Darius Darcy.

    IT'S A TRUTH universally acknowledged that when rich people move into the hood, where it's a little bit broken and a little bit forgotten, the first thing they want to do is clean it up. But it's not just the junky stuff they'll get rid of. People can be thrown away too, like last night's trash left out on sidewalks or pushed to the edge of wherever all broken things go. What those rich people don't always know is that broken and forgotten neighborhoods were first built out of love.
    The new owners are moving into the mini-mansion across the street today. For the last few months, construction crews have been giving that abandoned house an Extreme Makeover: Bushwick¹ Edition. They gutted and renovated the best thing on our block – that run-down, weed-infested, boarded-up house. Now it looks like something that belongs in the suburbs, with its wide double doors, sparkling windows, and tiny manicured lawn.
    I pull back the curtains to greet my little corner of Bushwick and Jefferson Avenues, my very own way of stretching out my arms and yawning at the morning sun. This is where I see words swim in and around my neighborhood like dust from overhead train tracks. It's all poetry. So I pull those words together and try to make sense of it all: my hood, my Brooklyn, my life, my world, and me in it.
    Everything is how it's supposed to be – except for that mini-mansion that's like a newly polished pair of Jordans thrown in with a bunch of well-worn knockoffs.
1. Bushwick is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New-York, renowned for its street art.