Home Girl by Judith Matloff
Judith Matloff is a foreign correspondent, who after years of covering violence in other countries, decides to live surrounded by it in West Harlem, a center of drug trade and racial tensions.
But her new home is also rich in history and culture, and she begins to understand that it might not be a bad place to settle down after all. She and her husband begin to restore a house, learn about Dominicans and start a family.
Matloff writes like a journalist--a good one--with concise sentences that lack no punch or element of description. She works humor, poignancy and deep thoughts about life throughout the book without ever seeming sanctimonious.
She is fair to her family, friends and neighbors--portraying the characters as complicated and fascinating as they are in real life.
Having a background in journalism myself, I was enchanted with Matloff's story and her writing style. She reminded me to look beneath the surface of houses, neighborhoods, books and, most importantly, other people.
Nice reminder here at Thanksgiving. I hope YOU have a happy one.
Favorite quotes...
The engineer walked through the house, grunting as he peeked behind pipes and trained his flashlight into holes. He started from the roof down, jumping on floors, flushing toilets, sniffing at the gas stove. The real estate agent looked away politely, like a nurse at a gynecological examination.
Turning up your favorite merengue on the radio is a way of showing the world that you're happy, of announcing your presence, of saying, "I just got paid!"
The city grew balmy...The muchachos shed their puffy jackets for the summer uniform: white T-shirts and running shoes. The multicolors of...discarded crack vials matched the spring leaves and daylilies that poked defiantly from the soil under the honey locust tree.
Other residents were already in the room where the meeting was to take place, including a well-dressed lawyer named William. Because he and I were both white, it was assumed that we were acquainted.
I puffed up my chest and in my best foreign-correspondent swagger explained about my past. No "I was stuck in crosssfire" was left out. I informed the detective about the time I had walked on a smoking mine dump in Luanda that had been blown up by rebels. I described how my plane in Zaire was stormed by half-naked looting troops. I told him about the close call with the Rwandan machete man. I was really on a roll here--the ambushes, the snipers, the howitzers, the dictators. I was one cool customer...After a long silence, and a strange look, the cop spoke. "You know what? You're a lunatic."
I hated them [the dealers] for profiting from the city's bereavement. Like the callous opportunists who suddenly jack up food and water prices in war zones, the muchachos were exploiting the tragedy for commercial gain.
We were all outsiders: the stubborn old-timers who stayed on in the neighborhood way after their friends left; a Dominican karate master who had resisted the drug tide; a bookish crack addict from Jamaica; a Zimbabwean writer who feared prison back home. The drug dealers...were also marginalized...And who could be more out of place than my husband, John, this solid Dutchman, who'd moved to Africa and then Russia and now here, and our little imp with the perfect Spanish. yet we all somehow fit in.
Home Girl by Judith Matloff
