Pride Summary

Seventeen-year-old Zuri Benitez wakes up excited to welcome home her sister Janae from Janae’s freshman year at Syracuse. That same day, the Darcys move into the newly renovated “mini-mansion” across the street from the Benitez family’s apartment building in Bushwick, Brooklyn. As Zuri’s younger sisters Marisol, Layla, and Kayla rush to meet the Darcys’ handsome teenage sons, Ainsley and Darius, Janae pulls up in a taxi. Janae and Ainsley develop an immediate mutual crush. The next Saturday, the neighborhood holds a block party. Janae and Ainsley dance goofily together, but when Layla tries to get Darius to dance with her, he freezes up and seems contemptuous. Zuri pulls Layla away from Darius but criticizes Darius’s attitude to his face; in response, Darius stiffly retreats into his house.

The next Monday, Zuri is working on her college essay on the apartment building’s stoop when Janae emerges in date clothes, planning to hang out with Ainsley at the Darcys’. Zuri is aghast. After a while, Zuri convinces herself Janae might want someone to go rescue her, so she rushes across the street. Darius lets her in to the house, where Ainsley and Janae are hanging out with Carrie, who possessively informs Zuri that she and Darius go to school together. Though Janae wants to stay, Zuri convinces her to leave by asking for help with her essay.

The following weekend, Janae, Ainsley, Darius, and Zuri go to a concert in Maria Hernandez Park. A teenage boy approaches their group and introduces himself as Warren, a Bushwick-native scholarship student and classmate of Darius’s at Easton in Manhattan. Zuri has a good first impression of Warren, flirts with him, and gives him her number. After texting, Zuri and Warren hang out in downtown Brooklyn—though Zuri insists that they’re just getting to know each other, not dating.

The Darcy family invites the Benitez family to a cocktail party at their house. At the party, Ainsley enthusiastically introduces Janae to people. When Layla jokes loudly about how Janae should hold onto her new, rich boyfriend, Darius overhears, pulls Ainsley aside, and says something that leads Ainsley to break up with Janae. The next time Zuri and Warren hang out, Warren tells Zuri he and Darius used to be friends, but when Warren got into a fight outside their predominantly White private school, the Darcy parents, who feared Warren was a bad influence, tried to have him expelled—and Darius didn’t stand up for him. Zuri is furious on Warren’s behalf.

Later, Zuri confesses to Janae she’s worried about fitting in at college—what if she wants to flee home to Bushwick? Janae tells Zuri she should visit her first choice, Howard University, to see whether it’s a fit. Using money saved from her Syracuse campus job, Janae buys Zuri a bus ticket to D.C. for the following day.

Zuri loves her campus tour at Howard. After the optional information session and lecture on African-American history, Zuri learns that the professor who gave the lecture runs an open mic at a nearby bookstore. Zuri, who writes poems, decides to go. At the open mic, she performs well, only to spot Darius in the crowd with Carrie and a girl she hasn’t met. Darius starts a conversation with Zuri, who learns that the other girl is Darius’s younger sister Georgia. When Darius offers to drive Zuri back to Bushwick, Carrie storms off. Zuri, late for her bus, grudgingly agrees.

Before heading back to Bushwick, Darius drives Georgia and Zuri to the nearby palatial home of his father’s mother, Mrs. Catherine Darcy, with whom Georgia is staying while she interns in D.C. that summer. Mrs. Catherine Darcy is so rude to Zuri both generally and specifically about Bushwick—which she calls “underdeveloped” and implies is beneath her grandchildren—that Zuri storms out of the house. When Darius follows, Zuri demands he take her to the nearest bus station. He agrees but, once he starts driving, unthinkingly takes the highway toward New York instead. When he and Zuri realize his mistake, she grudgingly allows him to drive her home. Since Zuri hasn’t eaten, Darius pulls over at a rest stop and buys her dinner. They chat and—unexpectedly—end up kissing.

Zuri and Darius continue their drive. When Darius asks how Zuri feels about him, Zuri asks how Ainsley feels about Janae. Darius admits he advised Ainsley to break up with Janae, but he says he knows now he was wrong. Zuri, furious, tells Darius that she can’t believe she kissed him given how he treated Janae—and Warren. When Darius tries to tell Zuri that Warren is a bad person, Zuri blows him off. They remain angrily silent until they reach Bushwick. The next day, Zuri is meeting Warren when Darius texts her, explaining that he hates Warren because Warren took “sexy” photos of Georgia and spread them around school, destroying Georgia’s social life and leading her to flee to boarding school. Zuri confronts Warren. When Warren, rather than denying it, offers to “explain,” Zuri rejects him.

Later, Darius apologizes to Zuri via text and asks for a second chance. They end up hanging out all day in Williamsburg, holding hands and kissing. A few days later, Darius invites Zuri to a party at Carrie’s house in Park Slope. At the party, the attendees are mostly White, and Darius (who is Black), who doesn’t pay that much attention to Zuri, acts weird and inauthentic. Zuri confronts him, they fight, and Zuri storms off to take the train back to Bushwick. While she waits for the train, she scrolls through Instagram on her phone, where she sees photos of her Layla sitting in Warren’s lap at an outdoor party. When Darius comes chasing after her, she shows him her phone. He realizes that Layla and Warren are in Carrie’s backyard. Zuri and Darius rush back to Carrie’s house, where Zuri finds Layla throwing up drunkenly in a bathroom and Darius fistfights Warren.

After Zuri and another bystander break up the fight, she, Darius, and Layla take a cab back to Bushwick. Darius offers to let Zuri and Layla hide out in his house until Layla has sobered up enough to go home. While Layla crashes on Darius’s sofa, Zuri and Darius have a heart-to-heart and end up kissing. A while later, Darius spots an ambulance park outside Zuri’s apartment building. Zuri, Darius, and Layla rush across the street to discover that the building’s beloved owner, Madrina, has died.

Madrina leaves the building to her nephew Colin, who sells it to a developer. Zuri’s father, Papi, agrees to a buyout because the Benitez family can no longer afford gentrifying Bushwick. Though Zuri is devastated, Papi advises her to focus on the value of “new experiences.” She ends up writing her college essay about how love isn’t enough to save communities: communities need money and resources too.

The day before Janae returns to Syracuse, Ainsley—who attends Cornell, an hour away from Syracuse—approaches Janae and asks whether he can drive her to campus. Janae and Ainsley reconcile. Then the Benitez family moves to Canarsie, a less expensive neighborhood deeper in Brooklyn. On Zuri’s first day of senior year, she visits Darius in Bushwick. He shows her that he has written “Z + D FOREVER” in the new pavement outside her old apartment building, which is being renovated.