Halsey Street
Naima Coster

A rapidly changing Brooklyn serves as the backdrop for this complex novel about family and acceptance. 

Penelope moves back to New York to be close to her elderly father Ralph, and is shocked at how gentrification has displaced her old neighbors with rich, corporate, mostly white yuppies. She teaches art at a local public school, but has an unfortunate tryst with her landlord's husband. After moving in with her dad, she sees his physical and mental ailments up close, and must decide if a care home may be necessary. 

Around the same time, Penelope's estranged mother, Mirella, contacts her from the Dominican Republic. The prospect of a reconciliation is mixed with her mom's own point of view as an immigrant to the US and her life beforehand on the Island. Penelope agrees to visit her, but has a big favor of her own to ask. 

Coster does an excellent job of crafting characters with flaws that you still feel attached to: Ralph is affable, but a workaholic who put family and marital duties on the backburner for too long. Penelope herself has not yet reached that stage of young adulthood where you see your parents as they are - flaws and all - not as you want them to be. Mirella's views on parenthood, and notions of authority, prevented her in part from bonding with her daughter. 

An engrossing tale of a black Dominican-American family in New York that feels ripped apart at the seams both from within and outside. 

Naima Coster's novel, Halsey Street, has been named a Best Book of 2018 by Library Journal (for pop fiction) and Kirkus Reviews (for best literary fiction and best debut). New York Times, Catapult, Arts & Letters, The Rumpus, Kweli, Guernica, The Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. She has taught writing to students in jail, youth programs, and universities.

Halsey Street is publication by Little A. Click here to purchase.
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Reviewed by
Elliott Turner​
​12/21/2018

Elliott Turner is the author of The Night of the Virgin, one of "the top ten fiction books of 2017" according to TheLatinoAuthor.com. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Atticus Reviews, VICE, Fusion, SplitLip Mag, and Transect Magazine.

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