Sep 18

Sep 18 Stories From the Tenants Downstairs

Author: Sidik Fofana
Publisher: Scribner
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

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.

TL;DR Review

Stories From the Tenants Downstairs is a seriously impressive debut story collection. I’m particularly partial to linked story collections, but still. No skips.

For you if: You like linked short stories with super strong characters.

Full Review

Stories From the Tenants Downstairs is a buzzy recent release with a premise that caught my eye: eight loosely connected short stories, each told from the perspective of a different person living in a single Harlem highrise. Many of them are facing eviction as rapid gentrification prices them out of homes they’ve lived in for years, sometimes decades.

I’m so glad I pulled this to the top of my TBR pile; this is character-driven short story writing at its best. Every character was just so deeply human, with such distinctive, strong voices. This paired really well with the full cast of audiobook narrators, who quite literally bring the collection to life. “Little Feet,” which takes the form of a letter penned by a 12-year-old boy to his friend’s mother, was possibly my favorite. (Oof, that one hurt.)

This is a collection that goes deeper than the primary themes of class, race, gentrification, and the cyclical trap of financial struggle. It’s about people, and choices, and survival, and humanity, and community.

What an impressive debut. No skips.