In a timely update of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi skillfully balances cultural identity, class, and gentrification against the heady magic of first love in her vibrant reimagining of this beloved classic. A smart, funny, gorgeous retelling starring all characters of color.
Zuri Benitez has pride. Brooklyn pride, family pride, and pride in her … Benitez has pride. Brooklyn pride, family pride, and pride in her Afro-Latino roots. But pride might not be enough to save her rapidly gentrifying neighborhood from becoming unrecognizable.
When the wealthy Darcy family moves in across the street, Zuri wants nothing to do with their two teenage sons, even as her older sister, Janae, starts to fall for the charming Ainsley. She especially can’t stand the judgmental and arrogant Darius. Yet as Zuri and Darius are forced to find common ground, their initial dislike shifts into an unexpected understanding.
But with four wild sisters pulling her in different directions, cute boy Warren vying for her attention, and college applications hovering on the horizon, Zuri fights to find her place in Bushwick’s changing landscape, or lose it all.
“Zoboi skillfully depicts the vicissitudes of teenage relationships, and Zuri’s outsize pride and poetic sensibility make her a sympathetic teenager in a contemporary story about race, gentrification, and young love.” (Publishers Weekly, “An Anti-Racist Children’s and YA Reading List”)
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One of the categories in a book challenge I’ve entered this year is choosing a book based entirely on its cover. That means no sneak preview reading, something I ALWAYS do before I select a book. But I was wowed by this cover, I love Pride and Prejudice, and I decided to go for it. Coming from a white upper middle-class family, it took me a while to settle into the flow of the story and rhythm of the language. I’ve heard or come across many of the phrases beforehand, but this allowed me to see them in action, to feel their effect, to get a different perspective and understanding. I loved the mixed black/Hispanic background of the main character, Zuri, and her close-knit family. They may be underprivileged and live in a rundown, ramshackle building, but she and her sisters and parents demonstrate the kind of bond, the kind of love, every child wants. Sometimes it’s overpowering, sometimes it’s overprotective and smothering, but sometimes it holds you in its warm embrace and cradles you and shelters you against the hurt that lies waiting for you outside. Zuri’s nemesis, Darius, brings into bold relief all those things Zuri has been warned against. Handsome, well-dressed, privileged, he seems to be everything she doesn’t want.
The author Ibi Zoboi lends such a creative hand to this retelling of Austen’s tale. The hood, the dialect, the entanglement of the sisters, the Hispanic influences in the everyday phrases and food (my mouth watered constantly) all contributed to a new and unique experience. And her poetry is something else. My favorite is the Haiku at the end of Chapter 18.
Not everything is what we think. Locations, buildings, especially people. First impressions often give way to deeper and more sensitive understanding. See what you think as you delve into Pride.
In Ibi Zoboi’s young-adult retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the characters are reimagined into the present day time period of Brooklyn, New York. Protagonist Elizabeth Bennet becomes 17-year-old Zuri Benitez who is watching her Bushwick neighborhood gentrify into something she doesn’t recognize. She’s going off to college soon and the fear is real that the comfort and culture of her community will be stolen away. Mr. Darcy becomes Darius Darcy who moves into a newly constructed home across the street with his wealthy family and their “snoody” attitudes. All additional reimagined characters are easy to recognize and equally fun to watch, and all the major plot points from the classic are covered. Pride is a smart retelling that I thoroughly enjoyed.
One of my favorite things about this book was the inclusion of poetry. Zuri writes poetry as a coping skill as well as an art form and the verse threaded throughout this story is stellar. It sets the tone for Zuri’s emotions and I was excited every time I arrived to one. I also really appreciated Zuri’s perspective about how original residents of an established neighborhood may feel when gentrification occurs. It’s happening to my spouse’s family and I can identify with Zoboi’s description that even sounds disappear. It’s an adjustment that requires a sort of grieving process, or strong and protective individuals that strive to resist it like Zuri.
The pride is fierce, the prejudice is strong, and the commitment to family, community and Afro-Latino roots abounds. With clean teenage romance, Pride shines love like the sun and is a safe read for most anyone. Enjoy!
A remixed YA version of P&P with Afro-latinx and African American characters that made my heart SING! Zuri was a character I felt like never gets her story told. I loved it and Ms. Zoboi is becoming one of my go-to authors.
A YA retelling of Pride and Prejudice with black teen characters, set in a Brooklyn neighborhood being shaken up by gentrification. Doesn’t that sound like a cool read? It really is.
Zuri likes her neighborhood the way it’s always been, so she’s not exactly happy when a new, shiny house is built across the street. She’s even less thrilled with the rich, seemingly pompous Darcy family that moves in, even if their teenage sons are incredibly attractive. While her sister Janae is happy to pursue a relationship with the oldest brother, Zuri is much less eager to form any sort of friendship with the boys. Zuri’s initial impressions of the younger brother, Darius, seem to be completely accurate, until she gets to know him, that is.
This was a great Pride and Predjudice remix. It provided a full cast of the typical characters in unique, modern ways. The pacing and flow was excellent and I couldn’t put it down.
I think that I got this at the ALA convention back in the summer of 2018, but I can’t remember for sure. It has been sitting on my pile of ARCs that I needed to get to, but never got organized enough to fit it in. Now that I’ve started planning out all my ARCs as I get them, I am going back and trying to work in what I can. This one I decided was perfect to read during February – Black History Month. And once again it was a book that once I started reading I was so mad at myself for not picking it up when I first got it.
I do love retellings, and this Pride and Prejudice retelling had so much that not only connected it to the original story, but also had a ton of new and cultural changes as well. It was also fun to read the setting of New YorkCity, especially when I had actually visited at least one of the places talked about in the story.
I liked all the characters and how the author gave them not only the P&P traits, but also ones that were modern and very culturally relevant for this story. There were even some characters that were outside of the original Austen tale, and so that made the story its own unique tale. I loved the landlord of Zuri’s building, she was so interesting. And then their dad was also so very neat. Somewhat like the dad in the Austen tale, but not exactly. He had his own reasons and ways he behaved about his daughters meeting men or what they did with their lives.
And then there was all the different types of food that they talked about for their family traditions. One thing that I love about reading books with cultures I don’t know a lot about necessarily is learning about new foods that I can’t wait to get out and try!
I also have realized that I do NOT have this book in my school library, and I don’t know why not, but it is on my first order list for next school year’s budget money.
There’s power in stories. Through books we can experience different lives, viewpoints, and perspectives. That’s why I enjoyed Pride by Ibi Zoboi. It takes a classic novel, Pride and Prejudice, and retells it in our day and age with a racially diverse cast. Zoboi’s use of a familiar story helped me better see and understand the perspectives of her characters, each of whom come from a background different from my own.
Love love love this book!!
I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator was perfection. Brought the emotion to life throughout the story.
Pride and Prejudice has always been a comfort read/watch for me. This spin on it was fantastic. Took all the themes I loved about the original and gave them a modern spin. The added poetry was one of my favorite parts. While a few scenes brought tears to my eyes, many made me laugh out loud.
I also love the commentary on gentrification, hit home as we watch it happen all over Austin. Zuri’s growth throughout the book was raw/honest, and I couldn’t help but be sucked into the emotional rollercoaster she was on.
You’ll love this book if you love enemies to lovers, retellings and social commentary in your fiction.
Notes: Own Voice
Such a unique take on an old classic that is always being rewritten.
This story was so refreshing to me. Why? Because it was realistic.
This is how people act in the hood. This is how they talk. And this is how they love.
Ms. Zobio, you did a fantastic job with this remake. It’s perfect for young adults and old ladies (me) alike. BRAVO!!
I really liked this book. Not all retellings hit the mark, but this one does it for me.
First of all, I love the cover. That chocolate brown, almost metallic looking cover with intricated etchings and the two main characters facing each other really caught my eye. The spray-painted “Pride” across the elegant background is a delightful indicator of the culture clash featured throughout the story.
I love the interspersed poetry throughout the book. It really helped to connect with the narrator and main character, Zuri, on another level. At the beginning of the story, I didn’t like her very much, but I also didn’t dislike her. I was skeptical of her thoughts and opinions, seeming very narrow and one-sided, but reading her poetry and watching her grow as a character was a major part of the overall appeal of this story.
I felt sorry or Janae and Ainsley most of the book. One for not being strong enough to fight and the other for just sitting back and waiting for things to right themselves. I’m sure there’s a lesson there somewhere, but I missed it. I just wanted those two to do more about their situation.
As for Zuri and Darius, it took most of the book, watching them both evolve, for me to see how there could possibly be any romance there beyond physical attraction. In some ways, I’m still not sure what really brings these two together. It all seems very circumstantial. I guess, in hindsight, there’s nothing wrong with a story about first love or first mutual infatuation. I see this as one of those relationships that happens so when they do finally find the ones they are meant to be with, they’ll be mentally prepared to take part in a mature and caring long-term commitment. Then again, I may be overthinking it. YA is not my usual read and I sometimes miss the points.
Despite not seeing where this ship is going, I did like the way the characters interacted in the end. It was nice.
Overall, the cultural issues addressed in the book are great for starting conversations about race, but I do wish more had been said and or addressed about why the Darcy’s moved to the “hood” in the first place. I feel like the author missed an opportunity there, but at least she mentioned it at all. Not too many people want to address that; but for me, it’s the part that really hit home, and it was so minor.
I loved the way the Benitez family is depicted. They don’t have a lot of advantages but they have more love than most people will ever experience in their lives.
I highly recommend this book to fans of contemporary retellings, and fans of culturally significant stories.
I am such a sucker for Jane Austen reboots and this Brooklyn-based YA version of Pride & Prejudice absolutely delivers. Zuri and Darius are the fresh modern embodiment of the classic characters we already love.
Vibrant, engaging, and delightful to read.
Vibrant, significant, and straight-up fun to read.
I liked this, but I think I expected to like it a lot more than I did given how much I love Pride & Prejudice. It was cute, and I did like Zuri and Darius, but it felt pretty rushed when I would have liked to spend more time enjoying the updated world. And this is rare for me, but I think I would have enjoyed seeing or hearing this story more than reading it, because I know I was missing out on a component of the language. But I did really love the inclusion of Zuri’s poetry and writing!
For me, a retelling of Pride & Prejudice set in the hood and dealing with race and gentrification could not be more perfect. This setting so perfectly captures the social stratification and anxieties of 19th-century England that I’m almost shocked no one’s done it before.
Our Elizabeth Bennet character is seventeen-year-old Zuri Benitez, whose pride in her Brooklyn neighborhood and her Afro-Latinx family won’t be dampened by the new rich neighbors, the Darcys. Zuri is just as headstrong and bold as you’d expect an Elizabeth character to be. She’s a poet, she’s a loving sister, and she cares deeply about the changes happening to her home. She’s also quick to judge others, especially those who she thinks are judging her (i.e. most people outside her Bushwick social circle). Her voice throughout the book is so clear and helps to underscore her character and the development that she eventually goes through.
Darcy becomes Darius, the Benitez’ new neighbor. Zuri instantly dislikes him because he doesn’t fit in with the boys she’s used to living in her neighborhood, she feels like he’s looking down on her and her family, and she sees him as a threat to her rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.
The themes of Pride & Prejudice translated so well into this new setting and these characters, and Ibi Zoboi really took advantage of them. Moving from Regency England to modern day Brooklyn never felt stretched or forced. I felt like I got such a clear a glimpse into this world, and probably understood it even more because of my familiarity with the original story.
It’s so difficult for me to separate this story from the original, which means that any changes to the basic storyline (which I know so well) throw me off. Pride had several changes from the Pride & Prejudice story that, though relatively small, forced me to reevaluate how accurate I expect retellings to be. I don’t know if I would have liked those changes if I didn’t know the original story, if the only reason they felt weird to me is because the original story is so familiar. I’ve read and watched so many different versions of Pride & Prejudice that I’ve come to expect certain elements, and when those elements aren’t there, I’m a little disappointed. But again, I don’t know if I would feel that way if I were thinking of Pride as a completely separate story.
I will say, though, that I didn’t find myself rooting for Zuri and Darius quite as much as I usually would. Normally, by the end of a P&P retelling, I’m pulling for the main couple so hard, I believe they can overcome any differences of class and personality because they belong together, dammit! In this retelling, I felt a little less sure. I wanted them to be together, of course, but I didn’t feel as strongly that they could withstand the challenges to their relationship.
Along with the slight changes in the story, there were a few, shall we say, additions to the plot near the end that I actually quite enjoyed and felt wrapped up other loose ends nicely. See, changes can be good! I didn’t feel like they altered the story significantly, but they allowed for some additional tension and further character growth.
Overall, I ended up rating this book 4 out of 5 stars. It’s not my absolute favorite Pride & Prejudice retelling, but it retold the story in a creative and incredibly relevant way, making an old story accessible and applicable to today’s world. And, let’s be honest, I love this story and these characters so much, I’ll never grow tired of reading about them.
Fantastic.
I’m loving this contemporary reboot of Pride and Prejudice, one of my favorite books ever!
This fresh retake on Pride and Prejudice, featuring Afro-Latinx sisters in Brooklyn, was smart, charming and a perfect fall read.