Tag: poetry

Who would have said that the earth with its ancient skin would change so much? Pablo Neruda

The Neruda quote is a wonderful way to kick off this story. This is about what change can bring about – both good and bad – when you make choices in relations to that change.

Change always seems to happen at once. Luz is awakened by the crashing of demolition on the building next door. She heads out in her power suit to meet her boss, Raenna, who has said she has news. Luz is expecting to be promoted. She is, however, blindsided that she will be fired and is advised to quit before it happens. Luz is as shattered as the building. Even worse – Angelica, a former friend from school, was at her first day as a waitress at the exclusive restaurant where this happened – and heard the whole thing. How will Luz tell her parents, Vladimer and Eusebia, who had worked so hard to help her achieve this success?

As expected, Angelica tells the local gossips, The Tongues, before Luz can bring herself to tell her parents. Hurt about hearing the news from the Tongues, Eusebia is not paying attention as she is pulling a cart of dirty clothing to the laundry mat. She falls, hits her head and is shaken badly. The Tongues help her up and take care of her to make sure she is alright. But is she?

As the tenants around Northar Park are watching the destruction of the building, they all begin to receive notices from landlords of other buildings that the apartments they have lived in for decades will be converting to condos, and they can be bought out or just move. But where can they move that they can afford? What about all the time they spent building the community? What would become of them all? Eusebia, whose head continues to throb after the fall, becomes enraged at the prospect of being pushed out and hatches a plan to halt the building.

While the plan is being put in place, Luz attends a block party where she meets Hunter, the white developer that is leading the gentrification of the neighborhood. Undeniable attraction brings them together.  Just as with Luz’s career, there is a divide between where she came from and what she is defined as to be “successful”. She enters Hunter’s world of wealth and privilege with wariness and discomfort that she had shed at Harvard and in the NY law firm.  

We then hear the story from Eusebia. How she will make the area seem undesirable to those outside the community, orchestrating robberies, peeping toms, and assaults. All while Vladimer, her husband and Luz’s father, chases a suspect that killed a boy and wrote “Go Home” on the body for the NYPD. We eventually learn she had been reluctant to come to the US with a 9 year old Luz, and had always talked about moving back with Vladimer at some point. Unknown to her, he and Luz were building a dream home in DR as a surprise, but she no longer wanted to return.

The choices that everyone makes – to try to halt the building project, to participate in the schemes of Eusebia, or to build a home in DR, there are questions about what choices you make. How do you choose to support your family? How do you choose to react to a letter of eviction? How do you choose to react to those that choose a different reality? All these questions are the explorations of the members of the community.

The demolition was ahead of schedule, just like the dismantling of Luz’s career/identity and Eusebia’s definition of self. As the women begin to find themselves and their voices, the building begins to go up. Through shattering events, the world crashes in on the family again, and the community again embraces them and helps them move forward. Each woman is scarred, differently, but each will grow as they need.

There are many more ways in which the choices we make are shown, and how the culture of acceptable and not are bantered about. This book is a study of these themes, as well as the complexity of the relationships of women, especially mothers and daughters. The book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pueblo Neruda was quoted more than once in the book. This collection of love poems is an amalgamation of women he loved. This novel takes the name for the building, and I believe is the amalgamation of the many people we all represent to ourselves and the world.