{"id":1275,"date":"2009-07-19T18:04:21","date_gmt":"2009-07-19T18:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/19\/brick-lane-in-the-real-world-things-appear-to-have-changed-in-london\/"},"modified":"2016-06-19T13:11:46","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T20:11:46","slug":"brick-lane-in-the-real-world-things-appear-to-have-changed-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/19\/brick-lane-in-the-real-world-things-appear-to-have-changed-in-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick Lane in the Real World – Things Have Changed in London"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Brick<\/a>
\nYou can see it there – the street name in English and, \u00a0I think, Bengali – the street brought to life in Monica Ali’<\/a>s wonderful book. \u00a0Brick Lane <\/a> was a sensation, well reviewed on both sides<\/a> of the Atlantic<\/a> and beyond, as well it should have been. \u00a0Reading it, a reader not only felt the feelings, but also heard the voices and smelled the cooking smells of a crowded immigrant neighborhood in London’s East End.Well we went there today, expecting to see the veiled women, street food and crowded food markets that orient us in a neighborhood like the one we lived in as we read Brick Lane. \u00a0But the book was published six years ago. \u00a0 And Nazneen, her sad husband, lover and daughters have surely moved on.<\/p>\n

\"BRICK<\/a>Gentrification has arrived – as surely as this old shop will soon be transformed into a web-connected, foam and half-caf coffee joint. \u00a0As we walked the streets today, they were full of cool people in multiple earrings, tight skits, hip tee shirts and modern demeanor, and with the goods to satisfy them. \u00a0Revealing, low cut short skirted dresses, funky feathered jewelry, pork pie hats and weird purses hung from stalls in side markets and on the Lane itself. \u00a0Music was bluegrass and Hendrix and newer than that \u00a0— nothing remotely ethnic. \u00a0There are lots of curry and other ethnic restaurants but they have wine lists and chic fonts for their menus. \u00a0And there are liquor stores.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\"BRICK<\/a> I’m not sure precisely why I’m telling you this except to remind us to be grateful for gifts like this wonderful novel. \u00a0Things have surely changed here on Brick Lane, but thanks to Monica Ali, her ear, her eyes and, especially, her heart and empathy and imagination, we have a lovely document of life as it was here just a decade ago. \u00a0This immigrant literature, whether it’s Ali, or Lahiri<\/a>\u00a0or Henry Roth or Saul Bellow<\/a> or Amy Tan<\/a> or Betty Smith<\/a>, provides historical scrapbooks as communities shift, or are displaced. \u00a0So it’s nothing new; it’s just so dramatic to arrive on the Tube at a place so recently real to me and to see it, already, well past the point it lives in in my mind.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can see it there – the street name in English and, \u00a0I think, Bengali – the street brought to life in Monica Ali’s wonderful book. \u00a0Brick Lane was a sensation, well reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, as well it should have been. \u00a0Reading it, a reader not only felt the … Continue reading Brick Lane in the Real World – Things Have Changed in London<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6,27,7,9,98,78],"tags":[509,3884,513,511,152,438,510,512],"class_list":["post-1275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture","category-current-affairs","category-life","category-politics","category-religion","category-travel","tag-brick-lane","tag-culture-book","tag-gentrification","tag-immigrant-neighborhoods","tag-immigrants","tag-london","tag-monica-ali","tag-neighborhood-change"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-kz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1275"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4563,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions\/4563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}