Making Rent in Bed-Stuy: A Memoir of Trying to Make It in New York City

In this fascinating mishmash of a memoir, filmmaker and critic Harris grapples with the contradictions of gentrified Brooklyn, tossing film reviews, history, journalism, and a healthy dose of bile into his lumpy mix. Harris, an upper-middle-class art-school student from Cincinnati, moved to New York City to pursue auteur ambitions and landed in predominantly African-American Bedford-Stuyvesant. Harris, who’s black, was struck by the gulf between gentrifiers and gentrified as well as his increasing unease over his own precarious foothold among the privileged. Harris’s bold attempt to connect Brooklyn gentrification to the national plight of the African-American underclass falls short, in large part because his primary contact with Bed-Stuy natives is buying nickel bags of marijuana. He never convincingly portrays other people in his life. But many other sections of this disjointed hybrid sparkle, and his lengthy vivisections of Spike Lee and Lena Dunham are particular highlights. The non–Bed-Stuy material features his best writing, but his inclusion of so much of it—most puzzlingly a Mississippi detour—further dissipates the central narrative. Despite the unevenness, 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. [em](June) [/em]