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Fresh out of college, Brandon Harris needs an affordable place to live—a search that leads him to the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Making Rent in Bed-Stuy explores the history and cultural importance of Brooklyn’s largest historically black community as it illuminates the experiences of one young man at the dawn of an era in which urban class warfare is politely referred to as gentrification. Bookended by two different breakups, a roommate and a lover, both from the white American elite, the memoir interweaves Harris’s story with a serious look at some of Bed-Stuy’s most salient legacies.
From the childhood of Jay-Z to the disappointing late career of Spike Lee, Making Rent in Bed-Stuy takes account of the famous heart of black Brooklyn’s cultural scene. Recounting Harris’s own encounters with figures as far-flung as Lena Dunham, doyenne of the Brooklyn zeitgeist who would never take the J train into Bed-Stuy to catch a house party, to Paul MacLeod, a gun-toting Mississippi man who makes a living charging $5 for a tour of his extensive Elvis collection—Making Rent in Bed-Stuy poignantly captures what happens when youthful idealism clashes head-on with adult reality.
Blending in-depth reportage and personal narrative, Making Rent in Bed-Stuy investigates the disappointments and ironies of millennial life, revealing Harris’s radicalization and the things he lost, and gained, along the way.