It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Brownsville, Brooklyn, has been home to wave after wave of New Yorkers, right? Since its founding in 1858, it evolved from a

rural hamlet into a densely populated, predominantly immigrant, and predominantly Jewish working class

garment district by the early 20th century. Then following World War II and the second great

migration, it transformed to a largely black and Latino neighborhood.

After a systemic disinvestment from the 60s through the 80s, the area had to rebuild itself through grassroots efforts by the community in large measure.

Today, it's home to the largest concentration of public housing in New York City.

A new novel explores some of that history in large part through the eyes of a Chinese-American

family across several generations.

And it raises questions about who belongs to a neighborhood like Brownsville and who gets

to tell its story.

The book is called Livonia Chalmain, and it's written by Abigail Savage Lou.

I'm proud to say Abigail is a former Brian Ler Show intern. Local Girl Makes Good.

So Abigail, welcome to WNYC as a guest.

Thank you, Brian Ler. It's so amazing to be on the other side.

And let's just dive right in.

You open the book in the summer of 1978 with two boys, eight seven and ten, being paid $100 to set a tenement on Livonia Avenue in Brownsville on fire. That is, of course, a specific

kind of New York crime with a specific 1970s history.

Walk us through that opening scene and tell us what you were trying to convey.

Yeah. So I'll say that some of the inspiration for that scene came from watching the documentary

decades of fire about the arson, the wave of arson in the

Bronx that really burned down a lot of the South Bronx in the 70s and 80s.

And so I learned through that documentary about that landlords did pay young children from the neighborhood

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