{"id":460384,"date":"2025-09-29T12:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T12:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/460384\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T12:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T12:19:10","slug":"the-house-on-rondo-recalls-st-paul-neighborhood-razed-for-i-94","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/460384\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The House on Rondo’ recalls St. Paul neighborhood razed for I-94"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s been lots of talk in the last six decades about the flattening of St. Paul\u2019s Rondo neighborhood. But, says Minneapolis-based writer Debra J. Stone, \u201cNobody has told the perspective of what a child saw.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the perspective she offers in \u201cThe House on Rondo,\u201d a work of fiction that owes many details to the author\u2019s life. Its heroine, Zenobia, is 13, around the same age Stone was when Interstate 94 was being built over demolished parts of the Rondo neighborhood in the \u201860s. Zenobia\u2019s mother, like Stone\u2019s, is from St. Paul \u2014 which Zenobia often visits although she, like Stone, is from northeast Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

Much has been written<\/a> about the historically Black neighborhood of Rondo, including by Stone, but she gradually realized there was a missing piece because \u201cin Black culture, adults don\u2019t explain things to kids. They\u2019re trying to keep you safe, not destroy your world. You\u2019re not supposed to be in adult business. So kids are like, \u2018All this secretive stuff is going on. But what is happening to the neighborhood?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The title \u201cThe House on Rondo\u201d may remind some of \u201cThe House on Mango Street,\u201d which is deliberate. Stone thinks of her book as akin to that bestseller about a Mexican American community in Chicago. Like \u201cMango,\u201d \u201cRondo\u201d includes many voices, including Zenobia\u2019s grandparents \u2014 whose house is scheduled to be destroyed \u2014 and friends and neighbors. Some sections of \u201cRondo\u201d are narrated by Zenobia\u2019s grandparents\u2019 house, lamenting the loss of traditions and community.<\/p>\n

Some of the material in the book comes from memories and family stories: including that gas streetlamps still needed to be lit when Stone was growing up. And that her grandparents received $3,000 from the Minnesota Department of Transportation for their home at 841 Rondo Av., but an attorney helped them get an additional $2,000 so they could purchase another house (it still stands on the edge of the Rondo neighborhood, on Iglehart Avenue).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe highway goes right through [what was] my grandparents\u2019 front yard,\u201d said Stone, whose book is being marketed to middle-grade readers but she thinks can be appreciated by all ages. \u201cA lot of the displaced people stayed within the vicinity of Rondo, as long as they could get a house, which is the other issue. The covenants and the banks that wouldn\u2019t give Black people mortgages \u2014 that was a difficult piece. But my grandparents got very lucky and purchased a home on Iglehart with the same number, 841.\u201d <\/p>\n

The author did research at the Minnesota Historical Society, Ramsey County Historical Society and elsewhere. She received reams of paperwork and photos from MnDOT, which she says made \u201call the memories come flooding back to me.\u201d And Stone, a former actor who still laments that she never quite made it to Broadway, called on her theatrical background to bring Zenobia, her family and friends to life.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou imagine yourself into different scenarios, just like you would as an actor. How would they behave? What are they thinking? How do they talk? How do they walk? Those were all important things for me to know as an actor and I translated that to writing,\u201d said Stone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s been lots of talk in the last six decades about the flattening of St. Paul\u2019s Rondo neighborhood.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-460384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115287554225684290","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}