Pride

Pride

By Ibi Zoboi

Zuri Benitez has pride. Brooklyn pride, family pride, and pride in her Afro-Latino roots. But pride might not be enough to save her rapidly gentrifying neighborhood from becoming unrecognizable.

When the wealthy Darcy family moves in across the street, Zuri wants nothing to do with their two teenage sons, even as her older sister, Janae, starts to fall for the charming Ainsley. She especially can’t stand the judgmental and arrogant Darius. Yet as Zuri and Darius are forced to find common ground, their initial dislike shifts into an unexpected understanding.

But with four wild sisters pulling her in different directions, cute boy Warren vying for her attention, and college applications hovering on the horizon, Zuri fights to find her place in Bushwick’s changing landscape, or lose it all.

It is a truth universally known that Jane Austen adaptations - particularly those of Pride of Prejudice -  are a booming business.  Pride is a P&P "remix" which places the action in and around Bushwick, in Brooklyn, NYC, and centers the action on Zuri, one of five Haitian-Dominican sisters with working class parents.  Interestingly enough, although most modern adaptations age them up, in Pride, the sisters' ages are pretty close to the original Bennett sisters, although their concerns are college and social media, rather than marriage and, well, despoilation for marriage.

Zoboi also focuses a lot of Pride on gentrification.  Zuri's initial impression of Darius (her Darcy figure) is of a renovated brownstone, formerly boarded over, now bougie.  I mean, he's associated with the brownstone, not that he is a brownstone.

This book does convey the class stratification better than most adaptations do, and I think the choice of setting was a good one to set off the themes of the original (even though it is a little more aggressive in its approach to those themes).  The actions of the characters only felt a little shoehorned into the plot, and mostly that centers around Darius' interactions with Zuri.Which had to be done because unlike the original, people didn't conveniently camp out for months at a time at a relative's house who happens to be conveniently nearby your best friend's new man's house.

Okay, I will be very honest: I read this like four weeks ago, and have been meandering my way through Cancer Ward ever since.  I started this review as soon as I finished it but it's been so long I have forgotten all my opinions about it, if I ever had any.  Frankly there's also been a lot of upheaval in my life since then, and sometimes, books are just secondary characters.  At least, this one is.  Look, I love Pride and Prejudice, I think it's amazing, it's witty, touching, and sensible.  Do we really need to repeat it endlessly in different iterations? No, but it's not harming anyone.  It's a classic story, and entertaining enough to support all the later weight of these loving knock-offs.  I think Zoboi does yeoman's work in making her version snappy, appropriate and generally logical.

People have been asking for years why Pride and Prejudice has inspired this kind of following, while, say Little Women, though beloved, has not.  I think that's pretty clear, but I will answer it for you anyway: people definitely see themselves in Elizabeth Bennet, and I think we're all pretty well agreed that Jo blew it with Laurie, and Professor Bhaer is not every young lady's dream guy.  What was Alcott thinking?? If you want to be immortalized, you gotta pick a sexy man who pisses off his mean aunt to be with you, not a shlubby teacher twenty years older than you. 

15: A Retelling Of A Classic