Customer Reviews

A Home in the Heart of a City: A Woman's Search for Community

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Having been born and raised in Jamaica Plain, I found Kathleen Hirsch's book to be typical of an outsider looking in. Throughout the book, there is a sense that the author is trying to impose her own romantic social views on a neighborhood whose depth and complexity clearly eclipses her own narrow and recent experiences there. Certainly her own experiences in the community bring some merit to the work, yet the reader cannot help but sense a tone of urbane arrogance as she observes with museum-like scrutiny the social habits of long-term residents who, ironically, are continually forced out by professionals like her.

Kathleen Hirsch's Home in the Heart of the City lacks the intimacy, comfort and cultural competence that makes Jamaica Plain such a wonderful town to live in.

Hirsch impressed me as a professional heterosexual White women trying to somehow appease herself for having bought a home in a racially, economicaly and sexually identified mixed town.

She consistently misnomers ethnic groups and uses race rather than personality to describe her neighbors. I and several long term JP residents could not relate to the stark, drug infested and unsophisticated description of the Latino community she struggles to write about. She fails to recognize that the health of JP's Latino community is in fact not "improving" thanks to her white compatriots, but rather, is only "worsening" due to gentrification. Latino owned businessess are closing down one by one. She also fails to recognize that JP is home to hundreds Latino professionals (MD's, Ph.D's JD's)such as myself. Fortunately, we can keep up with the rising real estate prices.

Finally, she fails miserably in capturing the essence of JP as one the most viable and colorful Lesbian communities in the United States. Lesbians own about 40% of the homes in JP. With more visibility than non-JP residents could ever imagine, lesbians here are business owners, service providers and way out of the closet co-parenting MOMS!

With some historical documentation Hirsch tries to pass off as an authority on JP. But my opinion is, unless you want a totally innacurate impression of this wonderful town, I wouldn't bother reading this book.

Kathleen Hirsch takes a journalistic approach to telling the stories of Jamaica Plain residents who fought hard -- and won -- against the tide of decline brought on by urban renewal in this Boston neighborhood. Skip the romantic introduction and read the interviews with the real people who, in spite of their many success, remain very active in spreading the revitalization to every corner of the neighborhood today.