Bed Stuy

McGill (Dear Marcus) addresses racism, guilt, and substance abuse in a heartbreaking story about love and growth. Rashid and Rachel are in love, but it’s complicated; Rashid is a Black man living in Brooklyn’s Jefferson Lane Housing projects and working as a waiter, and Rachel, an unhappily married white mother of two, is rich, a flautist, and almost twice Rashid’s age. They met while he was working as a model for her mother, a sculptor and Holocaust survivor. Rashid’s affection is a balm for Rachel, but with the odds stacked against them, tension mounts because of Rachel’s use of heroin, which Rashid’s father had died from, and a series of racially charged resentments, notably, Rachel believing she was passed over for a professorship in favor of a person of color. McGill laces the narrative with scathing political commentary (“Few things are more hideous in this country than the Republican Negro,” says Rashid’s cousin Staci) and intergenerational trauma, both Rashid’s and Rachel’s. Smart and touching, the affair revolves around a sad truth: as Rashid puts it, love is often “not dissimilar to surviving a deadly illness.” Throughout, McGill succeeds in depicting love as a universal force, for better or for worse. (Dec.)