Pride is a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice set in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick with a Haitian Dominican family at its center. I love Jane Austen as much as I love a good retelling, especially one that sets the story in a different culture and a different time. Really, give me The Wiz over The Wizard of Oz any day. So I was eagerly looking forward to reading Pride. It seemed like something that would have hit my sweet spot but unfortunately it didn’t quite land. The story begins with the Benitez family eagerly waiting for the eldest Benitez daughter Janae to return home from college for the summer. Zuri, the second eldest daughter and our modern day Jane is especially excited. The sisters have plans – college, a jobs, and then returning to their beloved neighborhood. Janae is the first one to start putting that plan to action by completing her first year at Syracuse University.
Zuri is less excited about her new neighbors across the street. Bushwick, we are told again and again, is the hood. Zuri wants her hood to stay the way it’s always been. Block parties, sitting on the stoop, sirens to lull her to sleep – Zuri loves it all. Then Mr. and Mrs. Darcy and their sons, Ainsley and Darius, move in across the street. They are Black and rich, transforming the building across the Benitez family into a mini mansion.
Zuri takes an immediate disliking to Darius. He is polite but not outgoing. Zuri assumes that Darius’s quiet reserve means he is looking down on her, her family, and her neighborhood. Perhaps sometimes he is but most of the time he's just minding his own business. Take their first meeting. Darius makes a comment about how he’s still adjusting to his new neighborhood and Zuri makes a snide remark in response. She who despairs at how her neighborhood is changing can’t quite forgive Darius for needing a moment to adjust to moving to a new house in a new neighborhood with new people.
If you have read Austen’s Pride and Prejudice then the plot of Pride will be no surprise. What is missing here is the funny banter and observations. Zuri is super judgmental which I know is the point but still. Maybe I’m more willing to give Pride and Prejudice a pass because it’s old and British and that distance makes it easier to laugh at and enjoy Jane’s judgment. Here Zuri is a modern girl in a modern time and her constant judgment and criticism felt mean, mostly undeserved, and hypocritical.
Almost as frustrating as Zuri is the "romance" that eventually follows. Just as quickly as she judges him, Zuri starts to like Darius. But it was too quick. The characters, especially Zuri, didn’t grow and change enough and the romance didn’t feel earned or real.
On the upside, this was a quick read. Also Zuri is a poet and there are poems throughout that were a pleasure to read.
