Journalist Natalie Y. Moore (Almighty Black P Stone Nation) grew up in a middle-class South Side Chicago neighborhood. Despite the many problems she discusses in The South Side, she loves it, calling it "a magical place," the cultural and political heart of black America, home of Ida B. Wells, Sam Cooke and Michelle Obama. As the area's bureau reporter for Chicago's NPR station, Moore found that every dysfunctional story could be traced down to the same root: "from housing to education to crime to food access: segregation is the culprit."
Moore combines her personal and family stories with history, scholarly data and investigative journalism to build a comprehensive vision of Chicago, its past, present and potential future. Housing is her greatest subject--the redlining, white flight and white policies that intentionally built this segregated town. She takes readers to her childhood corner store, her schools and first apartment, tells how black homeowners built and lost thriving communities, and how gleaming new public housing declined into vertical slums. Moore explains the effect of segregated neighborhoods on food access and public education, and in a chapter titled "We Are Not Chiraq," she analyzes and debunks the popular caricature of the South Side as a war zone. She confronts black romantic nostalgia for early Black Belt segregation, and balances that with her love of black and other culturally distinct neighborhoods. This is an essential book for anyone interested in the history and current state of race in the urban U.S. --Sara Catterall