Like Home
Like Home
“A sandwich shop?” he says plainly. “They turned the crack house into a sandwich shop?”
“It wasn’t a crack house—“
“Crack sandwiches. Is that – is that kale?” He gravitates toward the window and presses his face against it, trying to peer as closely as he can at the counter without actually having to go in. The attendant inside is shocked but doesn’t do anything. Just stares back.
I press my face against the glass too and look inside. Damn, this has to be the cleanest shop in Ginger East. No grime on the tiles, no dust in the corners. It’s as though it was transplanted here from some other suburb.
Rafa peels himself from the window and smooths a hand through his hair. He looks over my head at the street, narrowing his eyes at the open stores, the passersby, the road signs. He says, “This place changed,” and right then and there, I can feel those words in my stomach. I want to protest, but as I take a step back and really look around the street, I know what he means. The street is brighter, the business signs are on straight, and there’s a popular coffee chain at the end of the road. Gourmet coffee? We don’t need that, but it’s still here. And with the shop comes gourmet coffee drinkers who demand cleaner streets, working traffic lights, and safety. They demand sandwiches with kale, even if that shop used to host illegal poker parties upstairs and –maybe—more than illegal dope cookers in the back. They demand security, and that costs money.
Gentrification. Displacing people. Property tax. All those things we talked about at the protest meeting.
“Rent’s been going up, I think…,” I utter. I don’t want to say it but Rafa’s my friend and I feel like I can trust him.”
Chinelo – or Nelo, as her friends call her - lives in Ginger East, a neighbourhood which has seen better times. Most of Nelo’s friends have moved elsewhere in the city after a deadly incident at the arcade makes Ginger East feel less safe. Fortunately, her best friend Kate and Kate’s family are still there so Nelo has some consistency in her life. This sense of calm comes crashing down when the corner store run by Kate’s parents is vandalized and they, too, consider leaving the area. Everyone on the outside wants to ‘fix’ Ginger East, but they don’t truly understand the local people and the community, and Nelo feels they have no business trying to make changes. To make matters worse, Nelo and Kate’s friendship hits a rough patch, and neither girl is able to communicate and smooth things over. So Nelo is slowly but surely losing her neighbourhood and her best friend at the same time.
Nelo is the main character, and readers hear the story from her point of view. She can be very dramatic and perhaps emotes too much, but dealing with so many changes is difficult for her. Others have quite literally left her behind, and yet she remains fiercely loyal to Ginger East, insisting that it has many good qualities. Nelo has to deal with a lot of personal changes and struggles to remain positive. She must learn to communicate with the gal who once felt like her sister so that their friendship can continue to flourish. As well, Nelo has to accept that both she and Kate are becoming attracted to the two main male characters, Rafa and Bo. The developing romances are another change which Nelo finds hard to navigate.
Nelo is also confronted by societal changes, and Onomé presents a number of timely themes for her young adult readers. The gentrification and growing elitism of Ginger East is a main focus of the novel. The role of the police is another theme, shown when what Nelo thinks is a silent protest changes into something much more sinister. The setting of Ginger East comes alive through Onomé’s descriptions of the businesses, the adults in the community and, of course, Nelo and the other young people who are so desperately hoping to transform the place where they grew up into somewhere they can live happily and eventually raise their own families.
In the mid-1800’s a song was penned with the words “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home”, and this sentiment hasn’t changed throughout the ensuing years. Nelo is strong and determined to bring out the best in the place she calls home, whatever this may entail in the future. One thing is certain, her dogged attitude and commitment will help ensure that, like any real change and growth, Ginger East will develop thanks to a grass roots effort and not any outside do-gooders who are certain they know what’s best and think they can take control.
Interesting secondary characters, a vivid setting and a look at important current issues from the eyes of a strong and dedicated teen all make Like Home, Louisa Onomé’s first novel, a book to remember.
Ann Ketcheson, a retired high school teacher-librarian and classroom teacher of English and French, lives in Ottawa, Ontario.