The Defying Gentrification Playbook Signed Pre-Order

ORDER FROM ME HERE BY NOVEMBER 26 AND GET A SIGNED COPY SHIPPED BY PUBLICATION DAY ON DECEMBER 16, 2025.


A Black, Queer, FeminIst, Disabled, Urbanist, Guide, Toolkit, and Companion for modern life on Earth from one of the world's most notable contemporary urbanists and the creator of The Black Urbanist multimedia platform.

We all know the rent is too damn high, and everything, from getting our hair done to eating our soul foods from across the African Diaspora, is increasingly out of reach and touch, despite being practices our ancestors perfected. And let's not even get started with being surveilled, policed, incarcerated, denied, deported, and killed just for who we are as Black folks.

But Kristen Jeffers doesn't believe gentrification is inevitable, and they're done with taking gentrification on the nose.

After years of trying to convince their urbanist colleagues to reform their publications, organizations, local governments, community groups, and even their own attitudes around cultural diversity, equity, inclusion, and the ills of gentrification, they stepped away from the global urbanism scene for awhille, wrote a maniefesto and started to test out how to live as much of their lives as they could, while preserving energy to clapback just in time.

Or maybe never, because as a Black autistic nonbinary person who has been socialized and perceived as a woman their entire lives, rest is resistance. (Thanks, Nap Bishop and Ministry!)

This workbook is the result of that necessary pause. It's here for you as a fellow sista-sibling to learn how to embody rest as resistance, even if the rent is coming due. It's built around their Defying Gentrification Manifesto mantra: "I can have faith, I can engage in cultivation and creativity and self-care, but I need community care, access, infrastructure, and convenience to defy gentrification."

Interactive, with workbook pages and stories from their years in urbanism, there's something for everyone, but this one is especially for their sistas and siblings, because intersectionality is real and so is misogynoir, and if that was stopped, the entire world would stop being trash.

"I love that it's informative AND actionable, but digestible because I feel like these topics (rightfully) can get a little heavy/academic at times, but as a non-academic, I appreciate how easy to read it is."

L'Oreal Thompson Payton, author of Stop Waiting for Perfect and owner/operator of Zora's Place Bookstore in Evanston, IL.