Zuri Benitez loves her family and her block in Bushwick in equal measure. She is proud to be Afro-Latinx and she is proud to have a part of the fabric of Bushwick long before the neighborhood started to gentrify.
Which is why Zuri wants nothing to do with the Darcy family when they move in across the street even if the brothers are cute. While her older sister Janae falls hard for Ainsley, Zuri cannot stand Darius.
In Zuri’s eyes Darius represents everything that’s going wrong in Bushwick as new rich families buy up houses and push out poorer families like Zuri’s, changing the neighborhood forever. Worse, he is a total snob with absolutely no redeeming qualities.
When Zuri and Darius are repeatedly thrown together, their mutual dislike starts to shift to a hesitant understanding and maybe even something else. With college looming and so many changes in her future, Zuri has to decide if her pride and her prejudices might be stopping her from embracing a wonderful opportunity in Pride (2018) by Ibi Zoboi.
Pride is Zoboi’s sophomore novel and a contemporary retelling of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice.
Pride is a sweet story imbued with Zuri’s love for her family, her neighborhood, and her words as Zuri often journals her thoughts as spoken word poems. Zuri is a decidedly modern narrator but in trying to capture teen authenticity this story leans heavily on nicknames (which don’t always make sense) and slang that has the potential to date this story very quickly.
In addition to Zuri’s evolving relationship with Darius, a lot of this story explores gentrification both as a way to bring classism into the story and also as it relates to Zuri’s beloved Bushwick neighborhood. This aspect is the weakest of the story as Zuri’s opinions and idealism of the past feel much more authentic for a much older character with a very different life experience. The message and discussion are important but never quite make sense coming from a teenager who would have limited memories at best of the Bushwick of her so-called youth.
Pride is a short novel that stands nicely on its own as a contemporary romance despite limited space to develop the large cast of characters. Readers already familiar with the source material (or one of its numerous adaptations) will catch more of this novel’s nuance and shorthand nods to elements from the original
Possible Pairings: The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Finding Yvonne by Brandy Colbert, Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg, Truly Madly Royally by Debbie Rigaud, Bookish Boyfriends: A Date with Darcy by Tiffany Schmidt
Miss Print 