Pitching Pride

Book Cover for Pride by Ibi Zoboi

About Pride

Pride is a novel written by Ibi Zoboi and follows Zuri Benitez, a seventeen year old Haitian-Dominican girl. This book is a remixed version of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. It brings in themes of cultural identity, class, and gentrification in a romance setting along with discussing diversity and hardship in the teenage years. It rediscovers a classic novel in a modern setting.

Why Does This Book Matter?

This book matters because of its ability to connect to readers not only through diversity, but through common experiences that young people are going through. The book focuses on gentrification in Zuri’s neighbourhood, something that many young people may be experiencing but may not recognize - readers can empathize with the way she describes her feelings towards someone coming into an area where she grew up and changing things or “making them better." This book goes into detail about her feelings towards the rich, upper class people moving into her neighbourhood and may put to words what some readers cannot.

Going through these situations, like moving, or changes involving your home, can be life-altering for many YA readers, and Pride provides a window or a mirror for those going through it. The topic itself may not be widely talked about due to the experience being so personal, but it is still important for it to be reflected in YA texts. It may provide a window and mirror that is not very present in other texts, especially one that also includes diverse characters and gentrification specifically.

Passage and Analysis

In the novel, Zuri often writes poetry to express her feelings, and near the end of the text, she writes a poem called “Pride.” This poem exemplifies all of the themes that are at the forefront of the novel. In it, she discusses how her neighborhood seems as though it is being torn apart as she is losing her memories, and it is moving away from what she knew as home. In reality, the neighbourhood is getting cleaned up and changed to accommodate a new group of people, describing what gentrification truly is. She expresses her concerns about this, questioning how she will relive her memories or keep them at all. 

But my neighbourhood is not flooding or splitting in half. Its being cleaned up and wiped out. It’s being polished and erased. So where do I reach back and pull out memories as if they’ve been safely tucked away into a trunk or an attic like the people on TV who have enough time and too much space? Where do I call home? Where can I place a layer of brick to use as my platform, and hold my head up high to raise my voice and my fist?

Sometimes love is not enough to keep a community together. There needs to be something more tangible, like fair housing, opportunities, and access to resources. Lifeboats and lifelines are not supposed to just be a way for us to get out. They should be ways to let us stay in and survive. And thrive. (Zoboi 273).

This passage directly describes what goes on throughout the book. She expresses the concerns for gentrification and the consequences that it has on the community that is living there. She also discusses how the neighbourhood should be reformed to keep her community. She offers solutions for the problems, showing the knowledge that she has gained throughout the novel and throughout her experience with gentrification. The book has sections about her education and her development with it, as well as her opportunity to go off to college, which she mentions earlier in the poem. This final poem acts as homage to her whole experience; the hardships and the good times that she has throughout the book and the way she grows as a person shines through in her writing.

Angel Matos and the Role of Unhappiness in YA Texts

Angel Matos is a professor at Bowdoin College who specializes in gender, sexuality, and women's studies. He was a guest lecturer at the University of Ottawa during the Winter 2022 semester, and discssued Queer Theory and the Role of Unhappiness in YA literature for ENG 3390. Matos’s discussion about YA literature and its capabilities to go beyond the realm of happy stories comes to mind when looking at this novel. Though Matos is an expert in the field of Queer YA literature, his concept of the role of unhappiness in literature can be used as a tool to analyze the text in this instance. 

Matos states that unrealistic themes or happy endings may be shown in a lot of Queer YA novels, and therefore become the norm in many of these texts. Because of this, books that discuss happy situations, specifially in queer texts, ignore the hardships that many young people may experience. Matos describes how this becomes harmful for young readers because it discredits their own experiences with these situations, and romanticizes them. Many readers may then feel that they are experiencing situations wrong, or be unable to find representation in literature.

Using Matos' discussion as a lens, Pride looks at unhappiness in a different way. Zoboi is able to form Zuri’s identity and still make it an interesting YA novel, but also discuss hard topics like gentrification, losing memories, and low income living. The romanticization of this topic would fall directly into the category of a happy text when in reality, the situations Zuri goes through are not happy ones. Through this, readers are able to better identify with YA texts because they can directly relate to the experiences of the characters. Zuri struggles with accepting her new neighbour because although he is black like her, he comes from a rich family, and is changing her neighborhood and home. She has to accept the fact that things are going to change and that gentrification in her area is becoming the norm. 

This topic is something that is so important to focus on because many people feel lost from gentrification and similar experiences. Their homes are taken away or changed in a way that could make them unrecognizable, and in turn taking away their memories. For Zuri, a black mixed girl, this is even more present as she struggles everyday with racism and discrimination because of her identity, but also has to deal with losing this identity as her home slowly changes. This topic is not something that should be romanticized or taken lightly, and by showing the real side of it, the text becomes even more impactful for young readers.

Video on Pride

Here is a short video on the neighbourhood that Ibi Zoboi discusses in her novel Pride. Zoboi travels through Bushwick, New York City, and describes the scenery and inspiration for the novel. The video orients the reader with the neighbourhood so they can understand it better when they read the novel.

"Beyond PRIDE | Get to know Bushwick | feat. Ibi Zoboi" YouTube, Uploaded by Epic Reads, 2 October 2018, https://youtu.be/tdiCo32RXNw. Accessed 11 April 2022. 

Why Does This Book Belong on a Syllabus?

This book belongs in any course that promotes diverse books because it focuses on topics that are not widely found in young adult texts. Though the novel is primarily focused on identity and class, which is often found in texts, gentrification and education for low income students seems to be less written about. These themes are still important for readers to explore, even if they are not experiencing them. This book would be able to become the window, mirror, or sliding glass door that many readers need. Because it is based on Pride and Prejudice, it would be familiar to students in an English class, even if they had not read the original novel. It provides a new perspective on classic novel, but incorporates more modern themes.