Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda

published 2014

The city has shaken off the heat wave by the time the vigil for June takes place at the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary a week after Val’s rescue. It’s a Sunday and the congregation has decided to devote their traditional service to June. Across the street from the park, the people from the Houses are holding their summer reunion— a daylong festival of music and barbecue. 

Coffey Park is buzzing— every square of grass claimed by a different family. Old-school hip-hop is being pumped from two stacks of speakers. Girls in short denim shorts with rhinestone accents and bright tank tops travel as a team, dancing in time to the music as they check out the offerings on the various grills. Before Val can absorb any of the excitement, her mother ushers her into the church. The heavy door slams behind her and the party is shut out.

observations: One reviewer claims this book is an urban opera: there doesn’t seem to be any movement to recognize this genre yet, but it’s a brilliant description. The book starts with two young women, Val and June, in a run-down part of Brooklyn. It’s a hot night at the end of the summer, and they go off in search of adventure and take a pink raft out on the water. 

Only one of the girls comes back from the expedition, and the book follows the lives of local residents over the next few months: the girl who survived, another young woman who knew them both, a music teacher, a young man who was around that night, a Lebanese storekeeper, all their families. I found it entrancing, and impossibly real: I feel I would recognize the street and its residents if I were dropped down there. The young women’s restlessness and impatience with the world ‘watching the summer escape’, just at the point where boys are starting to be a real consideration, but not quite there. The area – Red Hook – is going to start receiving cruise ships shortly: is this going to change the future? The bulletproof Chinese where they get takeaway, the bodega with its community newsletter.

When I first read the section of the book above, I thought the ‘rhinestone accents’ were the way the girls spoke, and I spent some time trying to work out what a rhinestone accent would sound like.

The photos show young women doing stepping – a team-based dance and drill activity very popular particularly among African-Americans in the USA. The pictures are screengrabs from an amazing fashion show: designer Rick Owens asked step teams, rather than supermodels, to show off his new clothes, with incredible results you can see in a YouTube video here.