A young African American millennial filmmaker’s funny, sometimes painful, true-life coming-of-age story of trying to make it in New York City—a chronicle of poverty and wealth, creativity and commerce, struggle and insecurity, and the economic and cultural forces intertwined with "the serious, life-threatening process" of gentrification. Making Rent in Bed-Stuy explores the history and sociocultural importance of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn’s largest historically black community, through the lens of a coming-of-age young American negro artist living at the dawn of an era in which urban class warfare is politely referred to as gentrification. Bookended by accounts of two different breakups, from a roommate and a lover, both who come from the white American elite, the book oscillates between chapters of urban bildungsroman and a historical examination of some of Bed-Stuy’s most salient aesthetic and political legacies. Filled with personal stories and a vibrant cast of iconoclastic characters— friends and acquaintances such as Spike Lee; Lena Dunham; and Paul MacCleod, who made 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. Melding in-depth reportage and personal narrative that investigates the disappointments and ironies of the Obama era, the book describes Brandon Harris’s radicalization, and the things he lost, and gained, along the way.

For decades, crime novelists have set their stories in New York City, a place long famed for decay, danger, and intrigue. What happens when the mean streets of the city are no longer quite so mean? In the wake of an unprecedented drop in crime in the 1990s and the real-estate development boom in the early 2000s, a new suspect is on the scene: gentrification. Thomas Heise identifies and investigates the emerging “gentrification plot” in contemporary crime fiction. He considers recent novels that depict the sweeping transformations of five iconic neighborhoods—the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Red Hook, Harlem, and Bedford-Stuyvesant—that have been central to African American, Latinx, immigrant, and blue-collar life in the city. Heise reads works by Richard Price, Henry Chang, Gabriel Cohen, Reggie Nadelson, Ivy Pochoda, Grace Edwards, Ernesto Quiñonez, Wil Medearis, and Brian Platzer, tracking their representations of “broken-windows” policing, cultural erasure, racial conflict, class grievance, and displacement. Placing their novels in conversation with oral histories, urban planning, and policing theory, he explores crime fiction’s contradictory and ambivalent portrayals of the postindustrial city’s dizzying metamorphoses while underscoring the material conditions of the genre. A timely and powerful book, The Gentrification Plot reveals how today’s crime writers narrate the death—or murder—of a place and a way of life.

A celebration of Brooklyn features more than one hundred original articles that tap into the life of "America's Hometown."

As an incubator of culture and creativity, Brooklyn is celebrated and imitated across the world. The settings for much of its dynamic underground scene are the numerous industrial spaces that were vacated as manufacturing dwindled across the huge borough. Adapted, hacked, and reused, these spaces host an eclectic range of activities by and for Brooklyn’s unique creative class, from DIY music venues to skillsharing centers. These are spaces to make art together, throw parties and concerts, host classes and performances, grow vegetables, build innovative products, and, most importantly, to support and inspire one another while welcoming more and more collaborators into the fold. In Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Hubs of Culture and Creativity, Oriana Leckert introduces us to the creators driving Brooklyn’s cultural renaissance, and in their company takes us on a tour of these unique alternative spaces. Whether a graffiti art show in an abandoned power station, a circus school in a former ice house, or a shuffleboard club in a disused die-cutting factory, these spaces present a vibrant cross-section of life in the borough where trends in music, fashion, food, and lifestyle are set. A chronicle of a thriving and ever-renewing scene, this book will appeal to everyone who’s interested in the unique energy that makes Brooklyn Brooklyn.

Boss of Black Brooklyn presents a riveting and untold story about the struggles and achievements of the first black person to hold public office in Brooklyn. Bertram L. Baker immigrated to the United States from the Caribbean island of Nevis in 1915. Three decades later, he was elected to the New York state legislature, representing the Bedford Stuyvesant section. A pioneer and a giant, Baker has a story that is finally revealed in intimate and honest detail by his grandson Ron Howell. Boss of Black Brooklyn begins with the tale of one man’s rise to prominence in a fascinating era of black American history, a time when thousands of West Indian families began leaving their native islands in the Caribbean and settling in New York City. In 1948, Bert Baker was elected to the New York state assembly, representing the growing central Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvesant. Baker loved telling his fellow legislators that only one other Nevisian had ever served in the state assembly. That was Alexander Hamilton, the founding father. Making his own mark on modern history, Baker pushed through one of the nation’s first bills outlawing discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. Also, for thirty years, from 1936 to 1966, he led the all-black American Tennis Association, as its executive secretary. In that capacity he successfully negotiated with white tennis administrators, getting them to accept Althea Gibson into their competitions. Gibson then made history as the first black champion of professional tennis. Yet, after all of Baker’s wonderful achievements, little has been written to document his role in black history. Baker represents a remarkable turning point in the evolution of modern New York City. In the 1940s, when he won his seat in the New York state assembly, blacks made up only 4 percent of the population of Brooklyn. Today they make up a third of the population, and there are scores of black elected officials. Yet Brooklyn, often called the capital of the Black Diaspora, is a capital under siege. Developers and realtors seeking to gentrify the borough are all but conspiring to push blacks out of the city. A very important and long-overdue book, Boss of Black Brooklyn not only explores black politics and black organizations but also penetrates Baker’s inner life and reveals themes that resonate today: black fatherhood, relations between black men and black women, faithfulness to place and ancestry. Bertram L. Baker’s story has receded into the shadows of time, but Boss of Black Brooklyn recaptures it and inspires us to learn from it.

Introduction -- "If Sex Is Not a Biologic Phenomenon" -- Sex and Popular Sovereignty -- Sex Classification as a Technology of Governance -- Till Birth Do Us Part: Marriage, ID Documents, and the Nation-State -- Incarceration, Identity Politics, and the Trans-Cis Divide -- Conclusion.

From the author of Magical Negro, Winner of the National Book Critic's Circle Award 'Hilarious and hard-hitting . . . it ripples with energy, insight, and searing music' Tracy K. Smith, author of Wade in the Water Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night - the book that launched the career of one of our most important young American poets - is now in print for the first time in the UK, featuring a new introduction from Danez Smith. The debut collection from award-winning poet Morgan Parker demonstrates why she's become one of the most beloved writers working today. Her command of language is on full display. Parker bobs and weaves between humor and pathos, grief and anxiety, Gwendolyn Brooks and Jay-Z, the New York School and reality television. She collapses any foolish distinctions between the personal and the political, the 'high' and the 'low'. Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night not only introduced an essential new voice to the world, it contains everything readers have come to love about Morgan Parker's work.