Across the street, a blacked-out SUV pulls up in front of the new mini-mansion. I’m about to head into the kitchen when I see it. Papi must be sleeping in because he worked overtime last night, and I know he wants to avoid all that noise.

I slept in late, but I can hear my younger sisters, Marisol, Layla, and Kayla, joking and laughing in the kitchen as they help Mama with the Welcome Back dinner - peeling batatas, seasoning the chicken, boiling the habichuelas, and soaking the dry salted fish for bacalao. The Haitian-Dominican Benitez sisters already get enough attention on the street and at school as it is. Mama has joked that my curves have finally kicked in at seventeen - not that I was waiting for them. They’re hand-me-downs from Janae, and they’re even tighter than they were last summer. I fluff up my thick, kinky fro and throw on an old pair of jean shorts. Mama’s got a Welcome Back dinner all planned out. My big sister, Janae, is coming home from her first year of college. Still, I remind myself that today is special, and I won’t let those new neighbors moving in mess that up.

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.Įverything 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. Now it looks like something that belongs in the suburbs, with its wide double doors, sparkling windows, and tiny manicured lawn. They gutted and renovated the best thing on our block - that run-down, weed-infested, boarded-up house. For the last few months, construction crews have been giving that abandoned house an Extreme Makeover: Bushwick Edition. The new owners are moving into the mini-mansion across the street today. HarperCollins Excerpt from Pride, by Ibi Zoboi Read on below, and pre-order Pride here ahead of its Sept.

The author has exclusively shared the book’s cover (with art by Billelis and T.S. Zoboi, a National Book Award finalist for American Street, explores cultural identity, class, and gentrification against the heady magic of first love in this new book. If this sounds at all like a timely update of Pride and Prejudice, that’s very much by design. She especially can’t stand the judgmental and arrogant Darius - that is, until they’re forced to find common ground and they start to bond. 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. Zoboi’s upcoming novel centers on Zuri Benitez, a young woman with four wild sisters who’s contending with a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood.

American Street author Ibi Zoboi is following up on her widely acclaimed debut with a little Pride.

Pride and prejudice remix