It is a perfect emblem of loss and change and slow destruction of the unique culture of the city.

And as the economic caché of the neighborhood changes slowly, even those independent coffee shops vanish and are replaced-almost to a one-with chain restaurants. Usually it starts with local bodegas where you can get dollar coffees getting replaced with fancier, upscale coffee shops. There is an inherent homogenization that Starbucks represents. You have got to become a part of the city for real-in ways that contribute and give back and don’t just take.ĭuring one of the book’s action sequences, Starbucks stores come to life, free themselves from their foundations and attack the protagonists. I’ve joined my block association and I’m trying to participate in whatever activities they’re doing to try to preserve the neighborhood’s character. What I’ve tried to do is be mindful of the neighborhood and the culture and the history that I am joining. On the other hand, the cost of living is rising and I’m contributing to that. I am a black woman who has moved into a black neighborhood, so at least in that sense I’m not contributing. In some ways I am contributing to gentrification, in other ways I am not. How can people avoid contributing to that cycle? As someone who has loved this city and has loved its grittiness and its funk and its strangeness and its wildness, it is being tamed, and I think that’s going to kill it. The more that I researched, the more I began to realize that something fundamental to the city was being ignored and systematically broken up. And I was seeing the same thing happen everywhere. We went from chop shops and brick yards to hipster central.

My father’s been in Williamsburg for the last 30-something years. Over the time I was here, I watched it change. I wasn’t going to be able to buy in Crown Heights, which was the New York neighborhood I had been in, because Crown Heights had hit, like, fourth stage gentrification.

And Mom’s death did spur a period of to grow new things and try new things. Mid-life crises are not always triggered by getting old, they’re also triggered by an event. She did pass away while I was writing The Stone Sky. With the Broken Earth trilogy, I realized belatedly that I was processing my mom’s imminent death. A lot of times I don’t really understand what it is that I’m trying to cope with until after I’ve finished the book. I do have a therapist, but there was a time I couldn’t afford one and writing was the way I vented anger and stress and fear and longing and all of the things that I did not have a real-world outlet for. Jemisin: I’ve always thought of my writing as therapy.

The city we became