Pride
Ibi Zoboi
Young Adult Contemporary Romance, Retelling
Hardcover, 304 Pages
Publisher: Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins
Release Date: September 18, 2018
Overall Rating: 4/5
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.
I’ll be honest with you I haven’t
read Pride and Prejudice (gasp, I know) I have the book but when I started it,
I just couldn’t get into. I have watched the movie and read a few retellings. I
love seeing authors or people in general taking something they love and turning
it into their own thing while paying respect to the original work. Ibi Zoboi
did just that, yes while this book was a retelling of a classic story it was
fresh and stood on its own. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a retelling of
Pride and Prejudice like this, one that I could relate to, one that touched on
what it meant to be black girl in New York City.
Okay so let’s get down to it, I’ve
had my eye on this book for months and I was not disappointed, though if I’m
being honest I didn’t think this would be a bad book at all. It was well
written, well-paced, relatable and just good. Zuri, (huge fan of the name) is
smart, stubborn, passionate, family orientated, and extremely judgmental. She
had a plan for her life, work hard and go to a good college. I loved that Zuri
was excited to spend the summer with her older sister Janae, who just came home
from her first year at college. That spoke to me because I do pretty much
everything with my siblings, and when the twins went away to college it was
weird not to have them around.
My one biggest problem with Zuri
was how judgmental she was. It honestly was maddening how she judged Darius and
his family solely based off the fact that they had money. She judged them
before she had even seen them, and in her head, she knew she was absolutely
right about them. Though if I’m being truthful I can’t tell if Zuri was that
bad or if the reason I’m so hard on her is because I relate to Darius so much.
I’m not rich but I definitely know how it feels to not fit in to that box of what
people think it means to black. Darius as a character spoke to me because all
my life I’ve done things in a way that was different from what other black
people around have done and had people questioning if I was truly black.
Now this is not to say Darius is a
perfect character because he too is judgey as hell. If both Zuri and Darius got
over themselves, they might have been friends from the beginning. One of my
favorite parts of the book was how Zuri felt about her neighborhood. She was
worried about people moving in and gentrifying the neighborhood. Sometimes
people only see an area they think is “ghetto” or “hood” or that needs to fixed
but what they don’t see that these neighborhoods have a culture and life all
their own. It showed that neighborhoods are more than the buildings and
landscaping, neighborhoods are people and personalities. I might seem like I’m
reading too much into it but it’s something I can relate to and it made me
happy to see these things reflected in a book.
I recommend this book to any and
every one, it was fun book, a quick read and a reminder that sometimes people
need to let go of their pride. You do not have to be a person of color to enjoy
this book. Please do yourself a favor and get this book when it comes out, I
promise you won’t be disappointed.
