When No One Is Watching

Sydney Green reads an article about a slavery theme park in Brooklyn in the 19th century. The article horrifies Sydney but inspires her to explore more history. She goes on a tour of historic Brooklyn Brownstones (houses made of or resembling those of brown sandstone intimately tied to New York neighborhoods) led by Zephyr, who doesn’t know the same colloquial history that she does. Zephyr points out a building recently slated as a potential location for VerenTech Pharmaceuticals, a controversial proposal as “an opioid research center is being placed in a community that they feel was overpoliced during their own drug epidemic” (4). Sydney interrupts the tour to name the successful Black residents of the buildings; Zephyr only highlights the white history of the neighborhood.

Sydney moves back to her mother Yolanda’s Brooklyn address. She discovers that her neighborhood has drastically changed from gentrification. Most of her Black neighbors have been replaced by white people unfamiliar with the once-rich culture of the neighborhood, and her mother is no longer living at home. As Sydney observes the new neighborhood from her stoop, a BVT real estate agent named William Bilford comes over, trying to convince her to sell her Brownstone.