This Side of home

Review from Booklist Reviews:

Identical twins Maya and Nikki and their best friend, Essence, have lived in Portland, Oregon, in a traditionally African American neighborhood all their lives. At the end of their junior year at Richmond High School, Essence moves away when her alcoholic mother's landlord sells their home as gentrification begins to change the neighborhood. Maya, the more serious and sensitive of the twins, narrates both the events and her outrage when Nikki becomes best friends with the girl in the white family who buys Essence's former home. Then, when school resumes, Richmond's new principal seems bent on proving the school's "inclusiveness" by disrespecting its black students' traditions. Writing with the artfulness and insights of African American teen-lit pioneers Rita Williams-Garcia, Angela Johnson, and Jacqueline Woodson, Watson shows Maya exploring concerns rarely made this accessible: the difficulties in mounting a student protest; the nuisance of unconscious racial bias perceived in white allies; the emotional chaos within as a cross-race romance develops for Maya despite her desire to ignore it. Authentic teen characterizations mean that questions and challenges aren't always answered and that Maya herself discovers the limits of her own awareness. Essential for all collections, without regard to color or racial and interracial awareness of readers.