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Quote by Alyssa Cole

“No one had second-guessed whether we belonged or were a good investment. The realtors had talked about how we were a part of a wave of new people coming in to enrich the neighborhood, make it better and more valuable, without knowing a damn thing about us. No, that's not true. The realtors had known one thing, that I was starting to see was more important than I'd realized. Us. Them.”

Quote by Alyssa Cole

Book:When No One Is Watching

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When No One Is Watching

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“My neighbors’ distress didn’t surprise me. This was New Jersey, after all, home to the insecure and impressionable. Jersey was a land of lacking, the slow-footed little sibling to Manhattan: always never enough. My neighbors were tame, small-hearted gentrifiers who cared deeply about property value.”

Humor Reflection Jersey Gentrification

Book:The Atmospherians

Source: The Atmospherians

“He probably used the quote at dinner parties and made other people like him feel good about taking over neighborhoods they wouldn't have had the guts to drive through ten years ago.”

Book:There There

Source: There There

“There are people who will tell you that the building's neo-Gothic trash, Victorian and fake, a front pretending it's much grander than it is.”

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Book:Remains of Logan Dankworth

Source: Remains of Logan Dankworth

“If you want something to stay secret, don’t tweet about it for a decade. If you don’t want to ruin a neighborhood, shut the fuck up. (Or don’t move there in the first place.)”

Writing Memoir Twitter Gentrification

Author:Attenberg, Jaimie

“The land had returned to its humble beginnings, back to before someone decided to overcrowd it with bricks and gates and too many people.”

Coming Of Age Gentrification

Book:Last Summer on State Street

Source: Last Summer on State Street

“Mi fermai, fissando lo schermo incredulo. Un euro valeva più o meno settecento colones. Con i miei “miseri” seimila euro sul conto, avevo la bellezza di 4.3 milioni di colones costaricensi. Scoppiai a ridere e presi a girare in tondo sullo stretto marciapiede, le mani tra i capelli. Sembravo uno che ha appena vinto la lotteria: in Costa Rica ero, a tutti gli effetti, un milionario.”

Greed Materialism Meanness Gentrification Materialistic Society Materialistic Lifestyle Disparity Of Wealth Materialistic Mind

Book:La Pura Vida

Source: La Pura Vida

“I felt like my body was slowly disappearing. First my arms and legs blurred at the edges and vanished, leaving only my trunk, then that, too, started to disappear from the bottom up. I stared at the reflection of my upper half floating in the window, transposed over the city lights, like a photo taken from overlapping negatives. Who are you? asked the man in the glass.”

Identity Gentrification

Book:At Dusk

Source: At Dusk

“There is something inherently stupid about gentrified thinking. It’s a dumbing down and smoothing over of what people are actually like. It’s a social position rooted in received wisdom, with aesthetics blindly selected from the presorted offerings of marketing and without information or awareness about the structures that create its own delusional sense of infallibility. Gentrified thinking is like the bourgeois version of Christian fundamentalism, a huge, unconscious conspiracy of homogenous patterns with no awareness about its own freakishness. The gentrification mentality is rooted in the belief that obedience to consumer identity over recognition of lived experience is actually normal, neutral, and value free.”

Book:The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination

Source: The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination

“Gentrifiers focus on aesthetics, not people. Because people, to them, are aesthetics.”

Book:The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

Source: The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

“Bennie's corner of Brooklyn looked different every time Sierra passed through it. She stopped at the corner of Washington Avenue and St. John's Place to take in the changing scenery. A half block from where she stood, she'd skinned her knee playing hopscotch while juiced up on iceys and sugar drinks. Bennie's brother, Vincent, had been killed by the cops on the adjacent corner, just a few steps from his own front door. Now her best friend's neighborhood felt like another planet. The place Sierra and Bennie used to get their hair done had turned into a fancy bakery of some kind, and yes, the coffee was good, but you couldn't get a cup for less than three dollars. Plus, every time Sierra went in, the hip, young white kid behind the counter gave her either the don't-cause-no-trouble look or the I-want-to-adopt-you look. The Takeover (as Bennie had dubbed it once) had been going on for a few years now, but tonight its pace seemed to have accelerated tenfold. Sierra couldn't find a single brown face on the block. It looked like a late-night frat party had just let out; she was getting funny stares from all sides--as if she was the out-of-place one, she thought. And then, sadly, she realized she was the out-of-place one.”

Racism Police Brutality Gentrification

Book:Shadowshaper

Source: Shadowshaper