May 1, 2021
Granted a free house by a Detroit arts organization, the Eisner Award-winning Moore happily moved in--and became a white woman living in a majority Black city and a majority Bangladeshi neighborhood. She made friends in the neighborhood but began to consider crucial issues of capitalism, gentrification, and the housing crisis, even as she learned the unsettling history of her new abode. And she began to wonder how far Woolf's "room of one's own" really extends--to her as a queer woman with a chronic illness, to her Bangladeshi neighbors, to Black youth in the larger city? A different kind of memoir.
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August 23, 2021
A “free” house comes with costly strings attached in this wry memoir by journalist and artist Moore (Body Horror). In 2016, Moore, after nearly a decade spent traveling as a freelance journalist, moved into a bungalow purchased and renovated by a Detroit arts institution as part of a program to support low-income writers while helping to revitalize local neighborhoods “at risk of devastation.” As a “white girl in a Bengali Muslim neighborhood in a majority Black city,” Moore wrestles with her complicity in gentrification (though she’s told that the house had been abandoned for eight years before she moved in) and documents her interactions with her neighbors, including a pair of teenage girls with whom she trades local gossip and discusses hijabs, blessing ceremonies, and other aspects of Muslim culture. She also chafes under the arts organization’s “unwritten” rule that she must provide “free, on-call, twenty-four-hour publicity and marketing support” for the program, and, after taking out a loan to replace the crumbling roof, discovers that the house’s ownership history is murkier than she’d been led to believe. Throughout, Moore weaves incisive reflections on Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, sexism and classism in the arts and publishing worlds, urban gardening, and the “media narrative surrounding Detroit.” The result is a trenchant meditation on how communities come together, and the forces that drive them apart. Agent: Sarah Bolling, the Gernert Co.
September 15, 2021
A cultural critic recounts what happened after a grant awarded her a "free" house in Detroit. In a series of eye-opening vignettes, Moore shares her experiences being given a house by an arts organization as part of an urban renewal program. In 2013, in what the author deems a branding project, the organization began accepting applications from low-income writers to participate in a permanent writers' residency in the vein of Virginia Woolf, the central vision being that writers just need "a room of their own" to be successful. After more than two years of setbacks, Moore was finally able to move into the house. With keen insight and wit, the author examines her position as a "white girl in a Bengali Muslim neighborhood in a majority Black city." She chronicles the struggles with her role in the gentrification of the neighborhood--even though she was assured that the house had stood empty for the past eight years. Soon, her neighborhood's ongoing water, sanitation, and educational issues became apparent, as did the city's lack of empathy for the community's plight: "Talk of urban renewal and local boosterism masks horrible mismanagement, the violent seizure of resources, and city residents placed in grave physical danger." When she needed to replace her roof, she discovered that the organization, which had transparency issues from the beginning, would not honor the contract. Moore also candidly shares details of her childhood, the concern of her friends regarding her safety, and the daily challenges of her autoimmune disease. In time, Moore befriended the local youth and emerged with a sense of belonging in her new neighborhood, sharing meals and holidays, despite the seemingly endless bureaucratic obstacles. She also found solace in gardening despite an eccentric neighbor who disrupted her herbs and vegetables. Readers will find a good complementary read in Drew Philps' A $500 House in Detroit (2017). A unique, lovely meditation on the power of community.
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July 30, 2021
In 2016, artist, writer, and cultural critic Moore (Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes) was awarded a house in Detroit as part of the Write a House Fellowship. The fellowship was intended to give writers that all-important room of their own and revitalize Detroit's underserved neighborhoods with the work of their artists-in-residence. Moore was concerned about the ethics of a white woman being given a house in a majority-Bangladeshi neighborhood in Detroit. It turned out that the years she spent there imparted a complex street-level view of the ways she and her neighbors were affected by Detroit's history and housing policies, and of the way gender, race, health, and resources intersect with living in the midst of civic collapse. (One revelation from this book: Moore's "free" house turned out to be neither free nor the city's to bestow). Moore does her best to unpack her privilege, reflecting on her presence in the neighborhood and on Detroit's revitalization in general. In this book's grouped vignettes, she portrays her neighborhood with affection and captures corruption and bureaucracy with a frustration that is both comedic and fierce. VERDICT Moore's experiences will draw in readers interested in an intimate perspective on housing issues or life in recent Detroit. She provides thoughtful perspective on community, capitalism, and making art in difficult times.--Kathleen McCallister, William & Mary Libs., Williamsburg, VA
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Starred review from September 1, 2021
When cultural critic Moore (Body Horror, 2017) is offered a free house in which to write, she feels like she won the lottery. Free from the demands of earning rent, she can focus on her craft in her Virginia Woolf-style room of one's own. The house is located in Banglatown, a predominantly Bangladeshi-American neighborhood of Detroit, and Moore's residency takes place less than a decade after the city's bankruptcy. Moore, a white cisgender person, moves in well aware of the forces of white saviorism and gentrification and the insidious ways they obliterate ethnic neighborhoods and displace low-income, disabled, and immigrant residents. She seizes the opportunity to explore the nuances of these problems and get to know the people they affect directly. A physical manifestation of Detroit's weathered spirit, the house gives Moore a taste of the bottomless labor of homeownership. Her neighbors, and especially their children, teach Moore about family and tradition. Detroit itself is a lesson in corruption and governmental neglect, but also in grit and survival. Moore infuses this memoir with keenly researched insights about the historical forces that created Detroit's (and America's) housing crisis, creating a heartfelt, funny, thought-provoking meditation on the multifaceted fallacy of the American Dream.
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