“The position of my white neighbor is much more difficult…The game of keeping what one has is never so exciting as the game of getting.” – Zora Neale Hurston
So reads the epigraph of When No One is Watching
by Alyssa Cole
Sydney has agreed to put together a neighborhood tour
for the annual Gifford Place block party in Brooklyn. After a difficult
divorce, she’s back at home, trying to put her mother’s affairs in order. Finding
respite from the heat on her front stoop, she begins noticing all the new
neighbors who have displaced the familiar faces she grew up with.
One of those new faces is Theo. He’s living with his
ex-girlfriend while they remodel the unit they purchased. He meets Sydney at a
neighborhood meeting and volunteers to help her research for the tour. Not only
do they begin discovering past injustices perpetrated by white people, but they
uncover the sinister plot that is playing out in the present.
Cole aptly portrays the evil of gentrification and
white privilege. As events unfold, the horror is not in realizing this would be
plausible, but that this is real.
