Stories From the Tenants Downstairs
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Descripción editorial
Everybody got a story, everybody got a tale
Question is: Is it despair or prevail?
'Outstanding' New York Times Book Review
'Sidik Fofana has an acute ear and a perfect eye' Lorrie Moore, author of Bark
'Every once in a while a new writer comes along and refreshes our notions of what fiction can do . . . Buy this book, and prepare to be blasted by the brilliance inside' Ben Fountain, author of Beautiful Country Burn Again
Banneker Terrace on 129th and Fred Doug ain't pretty, but it's home. Home to young and old, folk just trying to get by. Cookouts with beer and wings, summertime with souped-up cars bumpin music. People don't come here for the bad; they came here to make a good life.
It is home to Swan down in 6B, reconnecting with his boy Boons, just out of prison. Home to Mimi in 14D, raising Swan's child, doing hair on the side. Home to Quanneisha in 21J, longing to leave but it's where she grew up. Home to Mr Murray in 2E, who has played chess outside on the sidewalk for years. Some of the residents of Banneker have got it together, some can't make rent or pay bills, some are raising kids, some are hustling on the side, all are living.
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs expertly showcases the strengths, struggles and hopes of one Harlem community, who are grappling with the effects of gentrification alongside their own personal challenges. It captures the joy and pain of the human experience and heralds the arrival of a uniquely talented writer.
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The residents of a low-income high-rise apartment building in Harlem form the beating heart of Fofana's dynamic debut collection. The hardscrabble tenants of Banneker Terrace tread water while their greedy landlord imposes evictions. In "The Rent Manual," Mimi in 14D remarks on how the building houses "a little bit of everybody," including "folks with child-support payments, uncles in jail, aunties on crack, cousins in the Bloods, sisters hoein." Besides raising her young son, she desperately cobbles together the rent before late notices land on her doorstep again. In "The Okiedoke," Swan in 6B nervously awaits his friend's release from prison, while in "Camaraderie," Dary in 12H, who is gay, has high hopes for his future while doing sex work to pay the rent. Quanneisha, the former gymnast at the heart of "Tumble," also sees better things for herself. But the apartment walls are closing in on her and elderly Mr. Murray in 2E, who has been challenging passersby on the street to a game of chess on a plastic crate for decades, until he realizes the time for games is finally up. Fofana delivers the hardy, profane, violent, and passionate narration in Black English Vernacular, and finds the humanity in all his characters as they struggle to get by. These engrossing and gritty stories of tenuous living in a gentrifying America enchant.
