When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole
Sydney Green is way beyond anxious and she has every right to be. Her neighborhood, Gifford Place in Brooklyn, no longer feels like home. Looking out from the top floor of her mother’s brownstone one evening, she is struck by how claustrophobic the view looks, with new buildings filling what used to be spaces of open air. She sees cranes looming ominously “like invaders from an alien movie, mantis-like shadows with red eyes blinking against the night, the American flags attached to them flapping darkly in the wind, signaling that they came in peace when really they were here to destroy” [p. 10].
She continues, saying that “even at ground level, the difference is overwhelming. Scaffolds cling to buildings all over the neighborhood, barnacles of change, and construction workers gut the innards of houses where I played with friends as a kid. New condos that look like stacks of ugly shoeboxes pop up in empty lots” [p. 10].
Sitting on her mother’s stoop, she remembers when a neighbor, Miss Wanda would “wrench open the fire hydrant for kids on sweltering days.” Now, “someone calls the fire department every time the hydrant is opened, even when we use the sprinkler cap that reduces water waste” [p. 11]. And Miss Wanda, who’d been Sydney’s neighbor almost all of her life is gone, leaving without even saying goodbye.
From the very beginning of When No One is Watching, we know “something’s just not right” in Gifford Place. Alyssa Cole does a fantastic job of building a sense of unease and psychological tension as Sydney not only observes the changes in her community but grows increasingly apprehensive about what might be going on that she cannot see. “Gentrification” of Gifford Place involves the insidious process of wealthy individuals taking over urban neighborhoods, raising home prices, tax assessments and rents for all, displacing long-term residents in the process. But the author hints that there are levels of evil and these practices compose just the top layer of a huge heap of hidden horrors that are necessary parts of the process.
I found it hard to believe that this was Alyssa Cole’s first thriller. She is best known for her historical romances, including the Loyal League and Reluctant Royals series. But she has acknowledged in a recent interview that as she conducted her research for these stories, she found herself repeatedly reading about anti-Blackness and incredibly cruel forms of oppression. This motivated her to write her next story with “a bit of anger—that we have all this history that we’re not taught that really clarifies why things are the way they are now, why people are protesting right now, why cops feel emboldened to act how they do right now.” In my opinion, it is this anger, this edginess, that makes When No One Is Watching a stand-out—stand-up-and-shout-about-it novel.
When No One Is Watching was published by William Morrow in 2020 and represents the contemporary thriller genre. What makes the story so special is the author’s presentation of historical facts to generate the reader’s fear of evil lurking in the shadows of Gifford Place. As Sydney reviews and refers to the horrors of racial capitalism in the past, our terror builds as we imagine what might still be happening in the present. In fact, the author has stated in a recent interview that the attempt of a large corporation to use lawyers, politicians, and money to take over Gifford Place is based on Amazon’s attempt to build a New York headquarters in NYC as recently as 2018. Although Gifford Place is fictional, the author provides a list of additional reading to assist in researching gentrification past and present in real communities.
One case of extreme gentrification I recently read about is taking place in the Bay Area in California, which is undergoing a radical makeover due to the rise in technology companies replacing old industries and jobs. New people moved in to work for these companies and replaced the pre-existing residents. Land values and housing prices increased dramatically, as did the pressure for property owners to get the most out of rents on urban spaces. The Bay Area has become the second densest urbanized area in the country after Los Angeles and has become radically wealthier but the newfound wealth coming from the tech, medicine, and finance businesses goes to a small percentage of people in a location that has more millionaires and billionaires than New York City.
Additionally, “…. in the historic Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C., a traditionally black community, property prices skyrocketed over the last two decades, resulting in the cultural displacement of the congregation of the Lincoln Temple United Church of Christ, a staging ground for the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington. When incoming residents did not join the congregation, its membership collapsed. By 2018, the regular congregation had shrunk to just 20 families, resulting in the closure of the historic community anchor.” [read more]
Williamsburg, Brooklyn is another area well known throughout the country for its gentrification. From 1990 to 2012, the ‘perfect storm’ of an influx of high-income white homeowners, the displacement of populations of color and change in rental and owner-occupied properties plowed through this New York City community. Census data was gathered to observe whether Williamsburg was gentrified more than surrounding New York City neighborhoods. Spatial and statistical analyses of Williamsburg and thirty-one other neighborhoods showed that Williamsburg has indeed become more gentrified than the other neighborhoods.
There are subplots in When No One is Watching, such as Sydney’s mother’s illness, Theo’s crime-associated childhood, and the involvement of his former girlfriend in the “reclamation project,” but they all funnel into the main theme, that of powerful big business and individuals who profit from them seizing property from the old, the helpless, the less advantaged who don’t have the finances, knowledge, or influence to fight back. Alyssa Cole adeptly addresses this theme from alternating perspectives. The first narrator, Sydney, represents Gifford Place pre-gentrification. She sees danger signs left and right when a large corporation, VerenTech Pharmaceuticals, decides to move into her Black neighborhood of Gifford Place in Brooklyn. Lifelong Black residents of the neighborhood are suddenly vanishing without a trace with their long-cherished homes put up for quick sale as white residents assume ownership. The problem is that Sydney is recovering from a marriage where her partner abused her constantly and she’s not sure if she can trust her observations. She would easily qualify as an unreliable narrator and would probably even describe herself as one.
The second narrator is Sydney’s neighbor Theo, the clueless recent white resident who at first does not realize the extent of his ignorance about the outright racial abuse and violence and the more subtle microaggressions that increase as Gifford Place continues to be gentrified. In his words:
I hadn’t thought of them as real people. Even when I’d chatted with Mr. Perkins, even when I’d watched from my window or observed people during my walks, I hadn’t really been ‘seeing’ them. It’s a startling realization, but to be fair, I’ve spent most of my life having to quickly categorize people as either threat or …. something else. That doesn’t leave much room for having to think about their past or their feelings, or whatever. [p. 63]
The gift Alyssa Cole gives us as readers is the opportunity to see her characters as real people. Sydney’s best friend Drea, Mr. Perkins, the Mayor of Gifford Place and his dog Count, Ms. Candace working in the community garden with Paulette, Abdul, a local store owner, Sandrine, an expert hair braider, falsely arrested young Preston Jones, and eighty-year-old Gracie Todd are just some of the people who will be displaced by “expensive condominiums, large Faux brownstones and smaller glass-fronted cubes” [p. 190]. These are the extraordinary spirits broken when gentrifying a community. At the story’s conclusion, one character writes in a private online forum:
Things changed, people moved, but they suddenly upped the taxes. Overnight, all the original inhabitants of my neighborhood went from living the American dream of owning property that had appreciated in value to having to sell because only millionaires can afford these kind of taxes. Where are we supposed to go? [p. 352]
Notes: If you are into puzzles, I highly recommend one I completed [City of Gratitude: Make the Ordinary Extraordinary] just after I finished reading When No One Is Watching. It reinforced the spirit of areas like Gifford Place and gave me hope that we will fight for the preservation of these communities. Also, my local library chose Tomorrow’s Bread by Anna Jean Mayhew as our Community Read for April. This novel is based on the true story of the gentrification of a predominantly Black neighborhood in Charlotte, called Brooklyn.
