Author Lilliam Rivera's family moved to the Bronx in the early 1970s, where they lived in the then-brand new NYCHA public houses in Fordham Heights. She told WNYC's cultural critic Rebecca Carroll that she experienced a lot of happiness as a child, but the 1980s — with the crack epidemic and high crime rates — took a toll on her.

"After a certain point," she said, "it became hard to live there."

But now the Bronx is starting to gentrify, she's seeing things differently. "I just kept thinking: what does that look like in the future?" she said. "My apartment...had two bathrooms and four bedrooms. Those are hard to come by." 

That sense of scarcity in the face of resources became an inspiration behind her new novel Dealing in Dreams, in which the projects of Rivera's childhood become the "Mega Towers," and the borough is a dystopian "Mega City," rebuilt by women in the aftermath of a man-made catastrophe and now patrolled by all-Latina gangs.

Dealing in Dreams is the second in what Rivera, who now lives in Los Angeles, says will be three books set in different versions of the
Bronx. She admits to having had mixed emotions about her hometown over the years. "It took me a long time to just grow to love it," she said, "because I was always trying to find a way to get away from (it)."

But now, she says, with time, distance and perspective, she's found that the Bronx not just a part of her history, but critical to her storytelling future. "Everyone has this thing: the Bronx is violent, it's hard to live, it's poverty," she said. "But for me, the Bronx is a lot of working class families, surviving and thriving."