This Side of Home

June brings rain, warmer weather, and concerns of increased violence to Maya’s Portland neighborhood. Still, the teenager insists that there has “always been something good here” that has nothing to do with the recent influx of new businesses and white families (4).

Maya has an identical twin named Nikki, and the sisters’ best friend is named Essence. The girls have been neighbors all their lives, so they’re devastated when Essence’s landlord decides to sell the house, forcing her to move to a neighborhood 45 minutes away.

On Maya’s last day as a junior at Richmond High, she learns that she has been elected student body president for the following year. Essence is dating a boy named Malachi, Nikki has a boyfriend named Ronnie, and Maya is dating a boy named Devin. As the six teenagers walk home together, they pass a coffee shop that used to be the home of an elderly woman named Ms. Thelma. Her grandson was killed by a stray bullet while he was spending the night at her house, and she later moved to Seattle. Maya feels that her neighborhood has become “a whole new world” in just four years (11). She worries about these changes, and she also fears that she and her twin are growing apart as they get older.