Abstract:
South of Broadway Bridge is a collection of two linked stories that take place in Inwood, Manhattan. The first story, Don’t Shoot, is about a fourteen-year-old biracial boy named Max who has been struggling socially since he started going to a white upper-class high school. Max’s father buys a gun, which Max then uses to try to reconnect with his old friend, Steven, who has drifted away from him. The second story, Zaria, is about an eighteen-year-old black lesbian named Kat who ran away from home when she was sixteen. Kat meets a girl named Zaria, and falls in love with her for the few months that they live—and get high—together. Don’t Shoot is a story about adolescent alienation, but it is also about the racial dissonance that a biracial youth may feel. After Max loses Steven, his last strong connection to the black sociality that he wishes to remain a part of, he feels lost. Kat leaves her home partly because of how her parents see her and treat her differently after she comes out as gay. Both stories address visibility, namely hypervisibility and invisibility. How being seen, not being seen, and how you are seen can affect minorities.
