the messages we send: Home Girl
Please note: these comments are based on how this book is advertised in both its art and content, but not the content of the book itself (the writing and story) as I have not read it. The comments are meant to demonstrate the power of image and packaging, and point to a pattern industries recycle over and over again.
Had to share a moment in Barnes and Noble… a culture/race/class twilight zone moment that will strike you or not strike you, based on your life experiences and your placement in those three categories. Random House put out this book Home Girl by Judith Matloff. I was attracted to the happy colors and title enough to pick it up for a peak. Then I took a closer look and see that the colors radiate from a refurbished brownstone smack in between two dreary brown ones. Its windows are smiling with flowers that a dutiful husband in a tight black t-shirt is watering, a cherubic baby peeking out from one of the flower pots, and a diligent denim-clad thin woman sweeping the steps with altruistic determination and confidence that she is doing the right thing. All the inhabitants of that brownstone are Caucasian. So here is the title again: “Home Girl”. Here is the subtitle: “Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block.” The surrounding lawless block are the two dreary brownstones and its brown inhabitants: a sexy, curvaceous brown-something pushing what looks like a baby carriage (could be a shopping cart), a guy hanging out on her fence, and a suspicious character in a parked car.
The back cover parallels the brownstone owner’s story as the native daughter returning to her city New York after spending years in war torn areas of the world (like Sudan) only to find herself back (by the winds of gentrification) in scary Harlem, finally conquering the natives and bringing white order to a lawless world.
So I am not down on reclaiming our neighborhoods from rodents, drug dealers, and other things that do not bring joy to our lives. And I know it takes activists of all sorts to bring about community change. But I’m tired of this same savior story. And its messages: Brown female beware! Your untamed fertility is dangerous and lawless (not valued like the little cherub peeking so safely from his window). Brown males beware: your idling and up-t0-no-good days are numbered. Gentrification and community change… such an emotional, complex subject, no doubt. Is what I felt from picking up this book the right message to send though? Could the book have been packaged in a different way?
5 Comments
Great observations Nova! Opinionated as I am about everything else, I don’t have any idea how to tackle the whole gentrification topic. I am just hoping that this book is more about someone’s urban odyssey to create a safe home for their family rather than someone’s mission to civilize the world and teach the natives the “right” way to live.
Again, without reading it, I am sure that a good deal of the quest is about creating a safe home for family, a human right. I wonder though if the author tackled her relationship to her neighborhood in the context of her neighbors, and not just her needs, etc. etc. Even if she did, the book is packaged with the wrong (or right in the publisher’s eyes-I think this is intentional because people think they are doing the right things) message.
I even find using the “Home Girl” term in the title offensive. The overall feeling I get from this project is: “I am not poor and disfranchized but if I was to act like I am, by the virtue of purchasing a building in the ghetto, I would be soooooo much better at it”. It’s like Tyra Banks walking around in a fat suit and later crying on her show because she really knows how terrible being overweight is. I am sure this book, will make the “home girl” very popular among her upper east and upper west side friends, none of which would ever venture north of 110th street without police escort LOL
JPLogan- very good points! I didn’t even catch that angle.
I have been a long-time member of the “invisibles” aka the “uptown people” while my offspring attended school on the upper west side. I know all about the species I’ve described and I am sensitive to the symptoms. Politically correct but incorrect about everything else. LOL