Stories from the Tenants Downstairs

Set in a Harlem high rise, a tight-knit cast of neighbours grapple with their own personal challenges while the forces of gentrification threaten to upend life as they know it.

Banneker Homes is 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 jeopardises 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. These neighbours weave in and out of each other's lives, endeavouring 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.

©2022 Sidik Fofana (P)2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited