“Jehovah has, in His Kingdom here on earth, a warehouse that contains a printing press and a sup­ply of food; the World Headquarters are located at the foot of Brook­lyn Heights”

“A lot of people around here going off the deep end with all these epidemics going around, like the crack epidemic”

Wash­ington Heights: That was where I’d found my kind of party people, that 25-to-35-year-­old posse of race-conscious black profes­sionals and community organizers whose politics are Pan-Afrikanist (if not just pro-black)

Shaune Edwards is a tough-minded member of the black working class who’s figured out how to use the system: “I’ll start from one point and just keep on till I get what I need.”

The five stories in this issue do not presume to represent the New York black experience in total. What they do presume to capture are the encounters five black writers had with people in several of New York's black communities.

Of Homeboys, Homelands, and the Island