Summary: A retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern Brooklyn.
Retellings or reimagining of classic stories is a staple, both for author development and for mining stories for new insights.
Pride by Ibi Zobi, author of American Street, is retelling Pride and Prejudice, a book I have only read once, five years ago. This version opens with a riff off of the classic opening:
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that when rich people move into the hood, where it’s a little bit broken and a little bit forgotten, the first thing they want to do is clean it up.
Zoboi isn’t just inserting a new setting or adding in monsters to the original language. She is retelling the story but with much of feel of the original. There isn’t quite as much humor in Pride, but it felt natural even as the original was set in a very different social space that I didn’t think could be recreated today.
The prejudice was more about family pride in the original and the different social stations that had more weight than is common today. The class and social differences today do not have quite the same weight, but that social commentary still came through.
This is a light story, a quick audiobook. Something to cleanse my palate from the too heavy books on race and theology that I am reading. It is the type of book that I am glad my library carries because I probably wouldn’t have picked it up on my own. But the book and the audiobook were well done.
Pride by Ibi Zoboi Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook