A young girl is born to a Brooklyn couple in 2001 and is named after the famous brand name of bottled water. At the dawn of the new millennium, Brooklyn hardly even resembles its heyday as home to the Dodgers at the midpoint of the 20th century. The context of being named for an idea that would have been ludicrous at that time—paying a premium price for nothing more than water put into a bottle—becomes a metaphor for the background of her story set against the backdrop of the 21st century gentrification of one of New York City’s most storied boroughs.
The forward trek of the narrative is one that follows the unlikely story—while commenting upon the reasons why it seems unlikely when it probably should not—of Dasani growing up surrounded by poverty, crime, drugs, unemployment and, of course, systemic racism and yet managing to excel academically beyond even the expectations of kids her age growing up surrounded by privilege.
This present-day (historically speaking) aspect of the narrative follows Dasani Coates from the time she is an eleven-year-old sharing a room with her two parents, seven siblings, and an unknown number of rodents. Over the course of the next decade, she makes a mark for herself not just academically but also as a gifted athlete and this eventually earns her a coveted chance to escape the cycle of failure and disappointment which grips the community she calls home. She is accepted into a boarding school in Pennsylvania created especially to assist low income students. What Dasani gains in a hope for her future, however, comes at the cost of losing contact with her family. And this absence serves to create and intensify a number of conflicting emotions about her self-identity.
Dasani’s personal story is set against a deep dive into the historical context of her family’s arrival in Brooklyn as part of the Great Migration of the early 20th century. This is a term referring to massive movement from the rural south to the urban centers of the north by African Americans during the Jim Crow era. The story of what is collectively called “the Sykes family” is actually traced all the way back to 1835, but with a primary focus on its mid-20th century settling in Brooklyn in the immediate aftermath of World War II. It is through the stark differences between life at that time and life in the early millennium in Brooklyn that the author illustrates the significance and immensity of the social changes which have taken place in the borough over that time.
