CBR10 BINGO: Home, Something, Home.
This is about as close to home as I can get. Having lived in Pittsburgh since the mid 1980’s, I probably should have read this native author before but somehow he wasn’t on my radar. He is now.
First, I think I need to get into a little history here. In this novel, O’Nan writes about a specific community in Pittsburgh’s east end: East Liberty. During the 1960’s, the Urban Redevelopment Authority hatched a plan to build a pedestrian friendly shopping district in an attempt to save the East Liberty business district from losing out to the suburban malls that were sprouting up. They tore down a lot of existing buildings, set up a pedestrian area and encircled the entire business district with a one way loop road called Penn Circle. In the end, it served only to allow traffic to drive around what had become perceived as a “bad” neighborhood and isolated the mostly African-American community and its businesses.
O’Nan has taken the neighborhood’s history of being constricted and isolated but here the catalyst is the construction of a bus only thoroughfare that whisks commuters from the suburbs into downtown allowing them to bypass the East Liberty neighborhood entirely. (This bus way does exist but was built 15 years before it takes place in the novel). Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different character who works or lives in the neighborhood in the late 1990’s. Some of the older residents remember when the neighborhood was a thriving community. For most, that is a distant memory and they work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. The youngest members of the community having never experienced that bygone era and only know the pull of gang allegiance and the funerals of too many friends.
Shadowed by a fatal accident that occurred during the construction of the bus way, the neighborhood is brought together at its dedication. The local church choir performs at the “celebration” of the bus way’s opening and as a tribute to the local politician that spearheaded the project. A lot of fanfare for something that ultimately renders their neighborhood invisible. Just a quick moment outside of a bus window.
This book foreshadows what has now become the gentrification of the East Liberty neighborhood over the last decade. The neighborhood that was once largely ignored has since become prime real estate due to the sprawl of nearby affluent communities and Google’s Pittsburgh offices. O’Nan clearly saw it coming when he wrote this book 17 years ago. His familiarity with the neighborhood and the care that he takes with the characters that he places there feels genuine. I do have to say that I was a little uncomfortable with his attempts at writing the slang and dialogue of the African-American community of East Liberty but I would cringe a little at any white dude trying to pull that off.
Three cheers for Cannonball Read BINGO! I’m not sure that I would have read this book otherwise but I’m certainly going to read some more of O’Nan in the future.
CBR10 BINGO: Home, Something, Home.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.