Stories from the Tenants Downstairs
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4.4 • 23 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
WINNER of the Gotham Book Prize * Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award, and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence * Longlisted for the Story Prize
Named a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Chicago Review of Books, LitHub, and Electric Lit
“A standout achievement…American speech is an underused commodity in contemporary fiction and it’s a joy to find such a vital example of it here.” —The Wall Street Journal
From a superb new literary talent, a rich, lyrical collection of stories about a tight-knit cast of characters grappling with their own personal challenges while the forces of gentrification threaten to upend life as they know it.
At Banneker Terrace, everybody knows everybody, or at least knows of them. Longtime tenants’ lives are entangled together in the ups and downs of the day-to-day, for better or for worse. The neighbors in the unit next door are friends or family, childhood rivals or enterprising business partners. In other words, Harlem is home. But the rent is due, and the clock of gentrification—never far from anyone’s mind—is ticking louder now than ever.
In eight interconnected stories, Sidik Fofana conjures a residential community under pressure. There is Swan, in apartment 6B, whose excitement about his friend’s release from prison jeopardizes the life he’s been trying to lead. Mimi, in apartment 14D, hustles to raise the child she had with Swan, waitressing at Roscoe’s and doing hair on the side. And Quanneisha B. Miles, in apartment 21J, is a former gymnast with a good education who wishes she could leave Banneker for good, but can’t seem to escape the building’s gravitational pull. We root for the tight-knit cast of characters as they weave in and out of one another’s narratives, working to escape their pasts and blaze new paths forward for themselves and the people they love. All the while we brace, as they do, for the challenges of a rapidly shifting future.
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs brilliantly captures the joy and pain of the human experience in this “singular accomplishment from a writer to watch” (Library Journal, starred review).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
