Room to Dream

The largest conflict in Room to Dream is the battle between corporations and small businesses. This process of bigger, flashier, profit-minded companies buying out the locally owned businesses is called gentrification. This process is rampant in historically Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities, where (mostly) white organizations move into neighborhoods that have been occupied by smaller businesses for years. The tactics of monopolizing an industry in an area so that big business can drive up the cost is real, as are the discriminatory ways in which businesses are acquired and re-branded to appeal to a white demographic.

Mia starts to notice the effects of gentrification on her neighborhood early on in the book. The closing shops leave her with a sense of loss, familiar sites with familiar faces becoming depersonalized and generic:

There was Mr. Abayan’s convenience store, which was now a 7-Eleven; the hair salon with the giant scissors in the window by the high school, which was now a Supercuts; and my favorite stationary store, where I got my sparkly green pencil. It closed because it couldn’t compete with the Office Depot (17).

Throughout the course of the story, more and more small businesses are run out of their prime real estate locations by seemingly generous offers from corporations. These business owners, who need money in the moment, sacrifice their great business location in the long term.

Gentrification thus not only affects people from a demographic standpoint but also means most communities take a hit economically. The smaller businesses in Room to Dream are intentionally affordable. When big businesses are trying to drive the small businesses away, they compete with affordability, only to raise the prices once they own everything. One prime example is when the congee shop is bought out by Jade Zen. Mia points out this aspect of gentrification on arriving at the site of her old congee shop: “[T]he wall that used to separate the two establishments—it was gone. Now Jade Zen customers sat eating pricey lettuce wraps on toothpicks where my parents and I used to slurp our congee” (27). In turn, gentrification drives away customers who don’t meet several certain requirements, including class, which often intersects with race. Ultimately, though, the big businesses that replace locally owned shops care exclusively about how much money they can earn.

What these big businesses don’t understand is that small businesses often build a community over time. This lack of understanding is demonstrated by Mr. Cooper’s outburst, in which he asserts that the Calivista workers were not supposed to bond. Mr. Cooper fails to grasp the nature of locally owned businesses, which are often hubs of social interaction. They offer a safe place for the same group of friends and family to go to regularly, often because they can actually afford to go regularly. One such example is Lao Lao’s favorite dofunao shops. When Mia visits, she “gaze[s] down at the silky dofunao, which clearly meant so much more than a breakfast to this community” (86). In Mia’s reporting process on how gentrification is changing Anaheim, she discovers just how important authenticity, affordability, and community are for the businesses and their customers.