The New York Times Book Review - Daniel Brook
…a searing debut memoir…With its stinging truths and inventive language, Making Rent in Bed-Stuy stands as a monument to what is lost when New York's low-rent underdog outer borough becomes just another county of kings.
a founding editor of n+1 and the author of All the Keith Gessen
Brandon Harris’s first book is a wide-ranging meditation on race, poverty, bohemia, and film history. It’s the introduction to American letters of a brilliant, funny, antic voice-and a rebuke, in a form newly discovered, to the people James Baldwin once called our ‘morally bankrupt and desperately dishonest countrymen.’”
Publishers Weekly
Hard-won insights into the divided loyalties of middle-class African-Americans, and a convincing description of a twenty-first-century New York City where only the rich can thrive.”
Kirkus Reviews
A thought-provoking examination of the millennial black experience in the first decade of the twenty-first century.”
From the Publisher
A melancholic, lyrical new memoir… Harris’s memoir has a pleasing specificity.” — The New Yorker
“Making Rent in Bed-Stuy from Amistad should be required reading for every single young person living in a gentrifying neighborhood.” — Vogue
“A searing debut memoir…With its stinging truths and inventive language, Making Rent in Bed-Stuy stands as a monument to what is lost when New York’s low-rent underdog outer borough becomes just another county of kings.” — New York Times Book Review
“Fascinating… This memoir provides hard-won insights into the divided loyalties of middle-class African-Americans, and a convincing description of a 21st-century New York City where only the rich can thrive.” — Publishers Weekly
“A thought-provoking examination of the millennial black experience in the first decade of the 21st century.” — Kirkus Reviews
“[Harris’s] wide-ranging meditation on race and class, film and literature, black history and crime reportage carves out its own space in American letters.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
“Brandon Harris’s first book is a wide-ranging meditation on race, poverty, bohemia, and film history. It’s the introduction to American letters of a brilliant, funny, antic voice-and a rebuke, in a form newly discovered, to the people James Baldwin once called our ‘morally bankrupt and desperately dishonest countrymen.’” — Keith Gessen, a founding editor of n+1 and the author of All the Sad Young Literary Men
“There were passages that made me burst out laughing, paragraphs that made me want to scream, and pages that made me want to take Brandon by the collar and simply shake him to his senses. Clever and powerful. Everybody interested in discovering how Millennials are living will find Making Rent in Bed-Stuy fascinating.” — Julianne Malveaux, economist and author of Are We Better Off? Race, Obama, and Public Policy Julianne Malveaux, economist and author of Are We Better Off? Race, Obama, and Public Policy Julianne Malveaux, economist and author of Are We Better Off? Race, Obama, and Public Policy Julianne Malveaux, economist and author of Are We Better Off? Race, Obama, and Public Policy
Los Angeles Review of Books
[Harris’s] wide-ranging meditation on race and class, film and literature, black history and crime reportage carves out its own space in American letters.
Keith Gessen
Brandon Harris’s first book is a wide-ranging meditation on race, poverty, bohemia, and film history. It’s the introduction to American letters of a brilliant, funny, antic voice-and a rebuke, in a form newly discovered, to the people James Baldwin once called our ‘morally bankrupt and desperately dishonest countrymen.’
New York Times Book Review
A searing debut memoir…With its stinging truths and inventive language, Making Rent in Bed-Stuy stands as a monument to what is lost when New York’s low-rent underdog outer borough becomes just another county of kings.
Julianne Malveaux
There were passages that made me burst out laughing, paragraphs that made me want to scream, and pages that made me want to take Brandon by the collar and simply shake him to his senses. Clever and powerful. Everybody interested in discovering how Millennials are living will find Making Rent in Bed-Stuy fascinating.
The New Yorker
A melancholic, lyrical new memoir… Harris’s memoir has a pleasing specificity.
Vogue
Making Rent in Bed-Stuy from Amistad should be required reading for every single young person living in a gentrifying neighborhood.
The New Yorker
A melancholic, lyrical new memoir… Harris’s memoir has a pleasing specificity.
Kirkus Reviews
2017-03-21
Race and identity loom large in Harris' highly personal and equally cerebral retrospective of his early days treading the streets of Brooklyn.Even today, "Clinton Hill," to many, sounds like a lot better place to live than "Bed-Stuy." So much so that when the author was pitched a place to live in New York City in the early 2000s, the latter was actually disguised and passed off as the former. Regardless, the brutal reality of adulthood and Bed-Stuy would soon be impressed on the conflicted Midwestern transplant hoping to make it as a filmmaker and critic in the city. In Bed-Stuy and its surrounding environs, Harris navigated the thorny landscape of racial relations and worked hard to make ends meet. In addition to his personal story, he also explores the struggles and similar experiences of local luminaries, including Jay-Z, who went from unknown drug dealer to international superstar and business mogul. In the example of Jay-Z, Harris sees his own struggles as a young black man trying to square with the American dream and dealing with the nation's systemic racism. President Barack Obama, who was trying to make it in Brooklyn during the mid-1980s, is also a source of serious contemplation about the ability and/or necessity of black Americans to code shift within certain sectors of society. The author's ambivalence is painfully demonstrated in strained relationships with his roommate and, later, his girlfriend, both white. As he writes about his roommate, "I would go weeks without talking to him, preferring solitude when I could find it in a loft in which you heard everything the other was doing regardless of the drywall." Traversing America's "double consciousness" is tough going, especially when you're just out of college and trying to earn enough for recreational marijuana and exorbitant Brooklyn rents. A thought-provoking examination of the millennial black experience in the first decade of the 21st century.
