The Rent Manual by Sidik Fofana, 2017
The magic trick:
Complete world building through second-person narration
Please allow me to get on my soapbox about Sidik Fofana’s debut collection, Stories From The Tenants Downstairs. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s not exactly underground. But I feel it’s been criminally overlooked by the gatekeepers at large. Not even worthy of the longlist for the National Book Award? Are you kidding me? I’ve read some short stories that have qualified for said honor and come on. Not to bash anyone, but these stories run circles around those entries. This collection is an instant classic, plain and simple.
So we’ll look at five of the eight stories this week. And it’s going to be difficult for me to map out the magic tricks. One, because as loyal readers can attest: I’m just not that bright. But two, the difficulty lies mainly in the fact that Fofana is doing a whole lot of really complex magic here.
Not even longlisted? Unbelievable.
Anyway…
“The Rent Manual” starts us off, and its second-person narration might remind you of famous stories from Jamaica Kincaid (“Girl”), Lorrie Moore (“How To Become A Writer”), or Junot Díaz (“How To Date A Brown Girl”).
And sure, that’s fine. It’s a valid comparison. “The Rent Manual” is a how-to of sorts; how to make rent in less than a week when you’re broke. But you’ll quickly find it to be a different kind of story than those aforementioned examples.
While those others – each admittedly excellent – use the second-person narration to create a kind of single-point essay, “The Rent Manual” goes deep. I really don’t know how Fofana does it. He creates such a rich world for like 40 pages, never letting go of the second-person device. It’s remarkable. So, so, so very many characters enter this world, and you feel like you get to know each along the way.
This is not a single-point essay. This is second-person world building.
And that’s quite a trick on Fofana’s part.
The selection:
Let Sheema’s ice-grill burn a hole in your face like the one time in eleventh grade y’all fought over a boy named Sherman and she confronted you early in the mornin at the 125th train stop. She yanked the book bag off your back and emptied it out onto the tracks.
She gonna say, It’s supposed to be fifty.
Be like, I gave her crowns today.
You didn’t tell me you was givin her that.
I told you I was givin her suttin special, Sheema. You was there the whole time.
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