My 5 Favorite Gentrification Fiction Books: A Guest Post by Lisa Braxton
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My 5 Favorite Gentrification Fiction Books: A Guest Post by Lisa Braxton
I grew up at the family business. Mom and Dad opened Braxton’s Men’s Shop, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a high-fashion clothing store in 1969, while I was in elementary school. I watched my parents work as a team and when I was old enough I pitched in too, waiting on customers, conducting inventory, and handling accounts. My parents were in business for more than 40 years. People still talk about getting their first tuxedo, dress shoes, or a suit at Braxton’s. But a newcomer driving through the neighborhood now would get no impression of the store’s importance to the community. Bulldozers and wrecking balls have leveled the block for a redevelopment project yet to happen. Looking back it’s not surprising to me that the journey of my parents’ business inspired the overarching theme of my novel, The Talking Drum. Gentrification, which can have its merits, is a highly controversial process, which has its merits, but can also be very damaging. Gentrification naturally provides great elements for compelling fiction.
If you’re interested in reading about gentrification as a theme in fiction, here are my recommendations:
My 5 Favorite Gentrification Fiction Books: A Guest Post by Lisa Braxton
When No One is Watching, by Alyssa Cole—This book has a lot to say about racism and gentrification. Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she's known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community's past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block--her neighbor Theo. This book had me reading virtually nonstop until I got to the end.
My 5 Favorite Gentrification Fiction Books: A Guest Post by Lisa Braxton
Restoration Heights, by Wil Medearis—This mystery who-dun-it , psychological thriller examines the fallout and deep racial tensions that result from economic inequality and unrestricted urban development. The novel follows the gentrification of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and asks the question: In a city that prides itself on its diversity and inclusivity, who has the final say over the future? Is it long-standing residents, recent transplants or whoever happens to have the most money?
My 5 Favorite Gentrification Fiction Books: A Guest Post by Lisa Braxton
Caul Baby, by Morgan Jerkins— Caul Baby is a novel about a Harlem-based family of Black women who have created a lucrative enterprise off of selling their caul, an extra layer of skin that is believed to provide protection and healing. Their desperation to maintain their stake within this gentrifying neighborhood with the decisions they make towards their children put them at odds with not only each other, but also their neighborhood.
My 5 Favorite Gentrification Fiction Books: A Guest Post by Lisa Braxton
Prospect Park West, by Amy Sohn—In this satirical peek into the bedrooms and hearts of Prospect Park West, the lives of four women come together during one long, hot Brooklyn summer. Their lives look basic on the outside but inside, each woman feels a building frustration with life that could burst any second—a frustrated Oscar-winning actress feeling pressure as she raises her adopted toddler, a woman who begins a dangerous flirtation with a neighborhood celebrity, a “former” lesbian who wonders why she’s drawn to women despite her sexy husband and adorable baby, and a woman who is consumed by an obsession with securing the ultimate three-bedroom apartment in a well-maintained, P.S. 321–zoned co-op building.
My 5 Favorite Gentrification Fiction Books: A Guest Post by Lisa Braxton
Them, by Nathan McCall—Barlowe Reed, an African American in his forties, buys a home in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, and must come to grips with new white neighbors and rampant gentrification. He shares a ramshackle house with his 20-something nephew in the old Fourth Ward of downtown Atlanta, a neighborhood known as the center of the civil-rights movement and the former home of Martin Luther King, Jr. Barlowe works as a printer and passes the time reading books from the neighborhood library and hanging out with other local black men at the corner store.
When Sean and Sandy, a white married couple from Philadelphia, buy and renovate the house next door in anticipation of a neighborhood "turnaround," everyone tries at first to go about their daily business. But fear and suspicion begin to build as more and more new whites move in and make changes, and once familiar people and places disappear.
In my view, the most controversial issue about gentrification is that of displacement. When upper-income people move into a neighborhood, landlords—presumably—raise rents beyond what the low-income households can pay. Gentrification has been the source of painful conflict along racial and economic lines across the country. No wonder the gentrification theme is in many novels on the market today. Authors, like me, want to add to the public discourse while choosing a topic that provides plenty of opportunity to build tension and controversy among fictional characters.
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Lisa Braxton is the author of the novel, The Talking Drum, winner of a 2021 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards Gold Medal, overall winner of Shelf Unbound book review magazine’s 2020 Independently Published Book Award, winner of a 2020 Outstanding Literary Award from the National Association of Black Journalists, and a Finalist for the International Book Awards. In addition to being a novelist, she is an Emmy-nominated former television journalist, an essayist, short story writer and writing instructor. She is also the president of the Greater Boston Section of the National Council of Negro Women whose mission is to lead, empower and advocate for women of African descent, their families and communities. She lives in the Boston, MA area.
My 5 Favorite Gentrification Fiction Books: A Guest Post by Lisa Braxton
