Stories from the Tenants Downstairs -- Sidik Fofana, Hardcover

Set in a Harlem high rise, a stunning debut 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.

Like Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place and Lin Manuel Miranda's In the Heights, Sidik Fofana's electrifying collection of eight interconnected stories showcases the strengths, struggles, and hopes of one residential community in a powerful storytelling experience.

Each short story follows a tenant in the Banneker Homes, a low-income high rise in Harlem where gentrification weighs on everyone's mind. 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, who hustles to raise the child she had with Swan, waitressing at Roscoe's and doing hair on the side. And Quanneisha B. Miles, 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 these characters and more as they weave in and out of each other's lives, endeavoring to escape from their pasts and blaze new paths forward for themselves and the people they love.

Stories from the Tenants Downstairs brilliantly captures the joy and pain of the human experience and heralds the arrival of a uniquely talented writer.

Author: Sidik Fofana
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: 08/16/2022
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781982145811

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 03/01/2022 pg. 7
Publishers Weekly 06/13/2022
Library Journal 07/01/2022 pg. 60
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2022
Booklist 08/01/2022 pg. 23