Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, alcoholism, and abuse.

This Side of Home examines the complex effects of gentrification on the national, local, and personal levels. Watson situates Portland’s current process of gentrification within the city’s history and within patterns unfolding across the United States. In Chapter 14, Watson uses a conversation between the protagonist and her twin to address how people of color and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds are disproportionately displaced by gentrification: “There is something—something that has allowed this to be normal, that poor communities get remade and their people are forced to move. Have you ever seen it the other way around?” (63). The protagonist is highly attuned to social issues, and she knows that this pattern is playing out in cities across the country, such as Atlanta and New York.

The changes in Maya’s Northeast Portland neighborhood have both positive and negative effects. One of the protagonist’s main fears is that the displacement of Black residents and the influx of white families will mean the loss of the community’s history and character. In addition, she is angry about the ways in which gentrification reinforces economic inequality and systemic racism; for example, “many Black entrepreneurs couldn’t get business loans from the bank” (42).