Pride Goeth before the Fall

Remember several posts back when I spoke about my guilty pleasure of reading Pride and Prejudice AU’s?

Well, recently I stumbled across Pride– an Afro-Latino retelling. Because I’m a junkie for almost every version I can find, of course I picked it up for a read.

Pride by Izo Zoboi is the story of the Benitez family who live in a small apartment in a section of Brooklyn called Bushwick. The neighborhood is slowly succumbing to Gentrification and soon the old house across the street is rehabbed and the wealthy Darcy family move in.

In this version Ainsley and Darius (Bingley and Darcy) are brothers and do have a younger sister, Georgia. Carrie (Caroline) is a family friend.

As much as everyone speaks on Darcy being the perfect guy and his road to educating himself and confronting/correcting his flaws once Elizabeth calls him out on then, at the heart, Jane Austen wrote the story about classism, the Haves and Have Nots and aspiring to rise above ones station ie: to better oneself. Pride hits that, never so much then when the Benitez family receive an invitation to a cocktail party at the Darcy’s and Mrs. Benitez makes food. In their neighborhood, if there is a party, everyone makes food.

Mrs. Zoboi writes the scene so well that I got second hand embarrassment from it. It’s so good, I needed to quote it here:

“I don’t smile when Mrs. Darcy greets us. Her eyes immediately drop to our shoes. So I look down too, to see Mama wearing her leopard print platform stilettos that she bought for her fortieth birthday at a small club in Bed-Stuy. My face gets hot in embarrassment because I knew that this wasn’t the kind of party for those kinds of heels” (p. 108)

This story pretty much follows the P&P script: Warren (Wickham), the boy from the Hood that goes to the same boarding school as Ainsley and Darius, showing his true colors later in the story. Carries’ character was redeemed earlier in the book and there was no final confrontation between the Lady Catherine character, this time the grandmother. Instead, there ware two life changing events in Zuri’s (Elizabeth) life. Events that show nothing ever stays the way we want it to and to experience life, one must experience change.

My favorite character is Madrina, the landlady/ Auntie of the Benitez family. A Santeria Priestess who operates in the basement of her building. The colorful descriptions of Bushwick are lovingly crafted in such a way that the reader is able to picture the neighborhood with it’s loud noises, and close neighbors.

As a white girl from the Midwest, I will readily admit it’s a place I’ll probably never see, (not because I don’t want to, but because I’ll just never get there,) but it is obvious that Ms. Zoboi loves her old neighborhood. As I’ve discovered from friends, people who lived/ lived in Brooklyn are a special breed, not matter where they go, Brooklyn never leaves them.

If you’re like me and love these P&P variations or even just need a new book to read, I would absolutely recommend you pick this up. It is a wonderful read and Ms. Zoboi is an illuminating author.

Summer had a way of creeping up on me and I did not read as mucha s I should have this season. Still, I have another review in the wings to post soon and I have several more books to read. So stick with me, dear friends.

In the meantime, don’t forget to take the time to relax and curl up with a good book.