VN-K-001 (detail), by Lyndon Barrois Jr. Courtesy the artist

Few writers can inhabit multiple characters with equal intensity and vivacity, and most who can are, of course, playwrights or screenwriters. Sidik Fofana’s debut collection, Stories from the Tenants Downstairs (Scribner, $26), reveals him to have this rare gift. The collection introduces us to eight black residents of the Banneker Terrace apartments in Harlem. As the poem that introduces the collection asks, “Everybody got a story, everybody got a tale / Question is: Is it despair or prevail?”

Each piece introduces a character walking this tightrope: Mimi, a single mom…