Pride by Ibi Zoboi

“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…What those rich people don’t always know is that broken and forgotten neighborhoods were first built out of love.” So begins Ibi Zoboi’s inventive, wildly entertaining “remix” of Jane Austen‘s classic Pride and Prejudice. In this contemporary take on the British Regency classic comedy of manners, the five Haitian-Dominican, working class Benitez sisters (Janae, Zuri, Marisol, Layla and Kayla) are crazy curious when their new, rich black neighbors, the Darcy brothers (Darius and Ainsley) move into the renovated brownstone across the street. Second eldest sister Zuri is especially suspicious, since she considers any and all changes to her beloved Bushwick, Brooklyn neighborhood as nefarious attempts at gentrification. While Zuri initially manages to resist the prickly charms of Darius, her romantic older sister Janae falls head over heels for Ainsley. But when Ainsley breaks Janae’s heart, Zuri unleashes the full force of her righteous sister rage on the Darcys, freezing them out of her family and neighborhood.  It’s only when Zuri accidentally runs into Darius while on a campus tour of Howard University that she begins to see a different side of the youngest Darcy brother.  Maybe a “bougie” black boy and a self-proclaimed “hood rat” can find some common ground after all. Maybe they can even fall in love…

Zuri and Darius’s heated discussions over being “bougie,” “ghetto” or “not black enough” are reflective of conversations being had all over this country by black and brown teens trying to define their identity instead of having it defined for them by a prevailing white, Western culture. The streets of Bushwick come alive through the sounds and smells of Mama Benitez’s cooking, the colorful cast of neighbors who live on the block, and the lyrical lines from Zuri’s poetry journal.  Zoboi’s newfangled version of an old fashioned story of love and class and race is stunningly unique and utterly timeless, all at once. Don’t miss it! (And for more Ibi Zoboi awesomeness, read her debut, American Street, which was one of my top 5 YA books of 2017)