The apartment building provides an arresting riposte to the perception that urban living grows ever more atomised, not least in New York City. It also makes an irresistible backdrop for fiction writers and Sidik Fofana’s bravura debut, Stories from the Tenants Downstairs, shows just why that might be.
Comprising eight interconnected tales, it’s set in Banneker Terrace, a low-income, high-rise in Harlem. Fofana draws his narrators from among the residents of its 300-plus homes, and while all may be black, their intensely vernacular voices testify to the rich multiplicity of their roots and backstories, their dreams and disappointments.
