New book explores succeeding by staying in your home community
Author Majora Carter says community and love were always apparent to her in her home neighborhood of the South Bronx.
Courtesy GiveChase via WikiCommons
Our neighborhoods have a formative impact on us. They provide us with a way of interacting with the world and appreciating specific symbols, narratives and events.
But regardless of where you’re from, success in America is often measured by how far away you move from home. That’s especially true lower income communities.
Listen: How leaving your community can exaggerate the “brain drain.”
Guest
Majora Carter is the author of “Reclaiming Your Community: You Don’t Have to Move out of Your Neighborhood to Live in a Better One.”
Carter says although poverty existed in her hometown of the South Bronx, the steady bonds and kinship in her neighborhood was palpable. She says that’s true of other communities around the country.
“Even despite how horrible things may seem outwardly,” says Carter, “there’s also always a sense of community in those areas, but it’s often overshadowed by this idea that those communities inherently have no value while we’re in them.”
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