Pride: A Pride and Prejudice Remix

Zuri’s conversation with Madrina clarifies Zuri’s harsh view of the Darcys and, more specifically, Darius. Darius exemplifies the threat to Zuri’s neighborhood and, by way of his relationship with Ainsley, the threat to Zuri’s relationship with Janae. With their “mini-mansion,” Darius’s family is playing a pivotal role in gentrifying the area. Meanwhile, Darius’s brother seems to be changing Janae. In both instances, Zuri is losing something she loves—her colorful neighborhood to gentrification and her big sister to a love interest.

Zuri’s fears that her sister Janae will change are conflated with her fears concerning the changes she sees in her neighborhood. Her concern is reiterated in the park, when she notices the many white people present and tells Darius, “Maria Hernandez Park should probably be called Mary Hernan Park now instead” (64). Darius—although a person of color—is, in Zuri’s eyes, part of the problem. This is reiterated when Zuri compares Darius to Warren: “I want him to see how it’s done. This is swag. This is how you step to a girl from Bushwick—a Bushwick native (71). Her use of the word “native” underscores Darius’s otherness. He can move to Bushwick in his fancy house, but he’ll never be a native. He won’t belong.

Boys like Warren are familiar to Zuri and comforting. She understands them and knows how to banter with them. Darius, with his khakis and fancy private school and big house, is strange to her. Nonetheless, Zuri draws a distinction between Darius and the white people gentrifying her neighborhood. She makes this clear to him: “Just so you know, in this hood, you’re just like everybody else. The cops and all these white people will take one good look at you and think you’re from Hope Gardens Projects no matter how many tight khaki shorts or grandpa shoes you wear” (67).

Zuri calls out racism in her statement, implying that Darius could be targeted by the police due to the color of his skin. This drives home the fact that gentrification is often a race issue. In gentrified areas, people of color are often driven out of once-affordable communities after white people move in, driving up property prices. Zuri’s comment suggests that, ultimately, race trumps money when it comes to how people are treated. Darius may be wealthy and well-educated, but he’s still Black—something that puts him, according to Zuri, on the same level as the people of color from Hope Garden Projects. This is a shock to Darius, who sees himself as an outsider in Bushwick.

Despite Zuri’s flirtation with Warren, her interest in Darius deepens in these chapters, serving as a reminder that Pride, like Pride and Prejudice, is ultimately a love story. Zuri’s interest in Darius is evident in the performative nature of her flirtation with Warren. When Warren checks her out, she makes a point of checking him out too—and she wants Darius to notice. When she gives Warren her number, she’s glad Darius is there to witness it. She wants to make him jealous, though this desire is subconscious in the moment. This is driven home by her pleasure at the end of Chapter 9, when she realizes that Darius saw her on her date with Warren. Zuri warms up to Darius when she asks her sister to loan him a pencil. This gesture is reciprocated when Darius apologizes to Layla for not dancing with her at the block party.

Zuri’s reluctance to accept change—in her neighborhood, her sister Janae, and herself—is explicated at the end of the Chapter 7, when she and Warren watch Bushwick Riot, surrounded by white people: “Old and new are mixing together like oil and water, and I’m stuck here in the middle of it all” (71). The simile comparing the situation to “oil and water” is significant, because the two substances don’t mix.

The impossibility of mixing oil and water is also why Zuri can’t fathom her sister Janae’s potential relationship with Ainsley. In Zuri’s eyes, Ainsley and Janae come from such different worlds, and have such a large class divide between them, a relationship is just as impossible as mixing oil and water. This mindset of Zuri’s also informs her reluctance to pursue her growing romantic interest in Darius. A common trait of romantic tales is that the hero and heroine must overcome hurdles, either external or internal, to be together. In this case, Zuri will have to overcome her idea that two people of drastically different backgrounds and classes, like herself and Darius, could be a romantic match.

Ultimately, it appears that Zuri may not be as different from Darius as she would like to believe. She teases him about wanting to go to an arts festival in the park, again pointing to his otherness and the way he sticks out from the other boys in Bushwick: “Is this… your thing? Art festivals in parks? Like, how come you don’t go to the park to play ball or something?” (67). However, Zuri is also a bit different. For example, instead of rapping, she writes poetry. Zuri’s friend Charlise flags this when she asks her “Why can’t you just rap like everybody else?” (73). By the book’s end, Zuri will acknowledge that she and Darius, despite the class gap, aren’t so different after all.