This Side of Home

by Renée Watson

Does growing up have to mean growing apart? From Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award-winning author Renée Watson comes a poignant novel about love for home and for ourselves, embracing change, and what it means to grow up.

Identical twins Maya and Nikki have always agreed on the important things—their friends, the right boys, their plans for college and the future. But before senior year begins, too many things are changing. Their neighborhood is starting to get nice—and not really in a way Maya enjoys. With houses turning into trendy coffee shops and restaurants, and neighbors, including their best friend, Essence, being pushed out, Maya’s neighborhood is becoming unrecognizable. And when a new—White—family buys the house Essence’s mom rented, Nikki suddenly has a new best friend and Maya has a new admirer, someone she’s not sure she should like. And then there’s their principal, intent on prioritizing the comfort of White students at the expense of the school’s largely Black identity. What’s worse, no one seems to be as alarmed by these changes as Maya is—not even Nikki. As Maya struggles to hold on, she begins to wonder where—and with whom—she belongs.

• ISBN10: 1619639300
• ISBN13: 9781619639300
• Publish Date: 6 April 2017 (first published 3 February 2015)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
• Imprint: Bloomsbury Childrens Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[Kelly]

Senior Maya Younger is a remarkable young woman, articulate, intelligent and ambitious. Identical siblings Maya and Nikki aspire to attend Spelman College, a historically black liberal arts college for women. The Portland neighbourhood is evolving, a predominantly black community displaced by white residents and corporate franchise stores.

They've painted and planted and made beauty out of decaying dreams. Block after block, strangers kept coming to Jackson Avenue, kept coming and changing and remaking and adding on to and taking away from.

Best friend and neighbour Essence is forced from the rental property she shares with her alcohol dependant mother, the landlord an opportunistic man exploiting the real estate demand. Another white family are now residents within the Portland community while her suburban school begins to diversify.

Maya's frustration was palpable. Her community flourishing black family homes are being acquired and businesses financially constrained while residents acclimatise. Maya has inherited her parental legacy, her mother and father community activists while encouraging Maya to uphold her ideals. As Maya and Nikki form a tentative friendship with new neighbours, Nikki is thriving, exploring the contention of Caucasians encroaching on black communities.

As senior president, Maya will collaborate with the new principle who is determined to innovate and positively influence education for all students. As Richmond tradition, the school celebrates Black History Month but as the new diversification has been introduced, African American students will celebrate diversity. The principal seemed awfully misguided. While attempting to promote inclusion, he erased the cultural signification of black teens and as a black educator he was inconsiderate and dismissive.

Instinctive prejudice and stereotyping of the African American community is predominant within the Portland suburb and touches upon black residents campaigning for community safety, beautification and infrastructure. Landlords evicting tenants from debilitated homes, refurbishing to satisfy white families. The community seems reluctantly accepting of the suburb transformation, Nikki in particular and Maya begins to challenge her sister and her ideals, causing a fracture within their relationship.

A point of contention is the flourishing interracial relationship between Maya and new neighbour Tony, shortly after her dissolving relationship with Devin.

And women throughout our neighborhood pull me aside, saying things like, "I'm glad he's dating you and not one of them." And by them they either mean a white girl or hood girl.

Although Tony is attentive and considerate, Maya experiences a sense of expectations within the wider community. Her concern of being hypocritical, dating a Caucasian Tony in contrast to diversifying her Portland town with the influx of white families. While at Richmond, white and Hispanic students are instrumental in a new diversity inclusion policy, at the detriment of black students and Black History Month. It raises the discussion of marginalisation and the erasure of racial identities in favour of inclusion. Inclusion is paramount in creating safe spaces especially with adolescents but the cultural and historical significance of Black History Month in particular should be celebrated. Black teens should be celebrated. One month per year shouldn't be infringed upon.

This Side Of Home is an intelligent read, wonderfully diverse and encourages discussion about cultural significance and inclusion. Compelling, compassionate reading.

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[Angie]

4.5★

This Side of Home was really great! Maya and her twin Nikki have many of the same feelings that I have, and the same confusions that I have, although they're prompted by slightly different reasons. The twins live in a neighborhood that has been primarily African American until recently. Their neighbors are moving after landlords fix up the houses and raise the rent. New businesses are popping up, and their school principal is set on showcasing the new diversity. Maya is not happy about all of these changes going on and she's determined to show the good parts of her neighborhood and school which were already there.

I was immediately drawn in by Maya's voice in This Side of Home. She felt so real and relatable to me. She's struggling with the changes she's seeing all around her, which are being shown as progress and improvement. Clean streets and newly painted buildings are good, but it's coming at the cost of removing the population that was there before. Basically, the neighborhood is becoming more white and forcing the original black population out which is unfair and Maya sees this. Why can't they have these things while keeping the people the same? It's clearly not right. At times Maya's reactions are naive and single-minded, but her story is very much about her placing her identity in this changing world.

Tradition versus change is a very big message in This Side of Home. We really get to see this as Maya works as student body president, wanting to do something meaningful beyond just dances. She bumps heads with the new principal who essentially shuts down all of her ideas in the name of diversity. Diversity is amazing, but not when you erase people to showcase it. He frustrated me soooo much! His heart seemed to be in the right place, but he's going about everything so wrong. Maya sticks with it though, and while she does do some things that get her trouble, she learns from all this. She finds a way to compromise on her ideas without compromising her values.

I do wish that This Side of Home did touch more on Maya and Nikki forming their own identities apart from each other. We do see some of this, but not as much as I was expecting. I especially wanted more from Nikki because almost every time she was on the page, I was like "this is me!" They're identical twins, but Maya is referred to as the black one and Nikki is the white one because of how they dress and do their hair. They have the same skin, but Nikki isn't "black enough" for their community and she's much more accepting of all of the changes they're facing. This is me! I am half-white, but I got the "you're acting white" thing just like Nikki does. We both like being in mixed company. We're not acting anything, just expressing ourselves in a different way!

There's also a really cute romance in This Side of Home. Maya's best friend's family is one of the ones forced to move, and in their place comes Tony's family. They get to know each other because of student council, and things just go from there. Maya is hesitant at first, because of the tension in their neighborhood, she doesn't want to drawn attention to them. But Tony and Maya actually talk these things out! They have the important discussions! And I swear I nearly swooned when Tony was rubbing oil into Maya's hair for her!

This Side of Home was just really great. It explores a topic that I hadn't read about before, and it gives such an authentic portrayal of being a black girl today, trying to find her way. I really admired Maya for being so rooted in her culture and fighting for it, but also learning that there's a way for her to exist with everyone else. We don't need to push others out to keep the things that are important. We all exist together and should learn from one another instead of being an us and them.

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