When I sit down with Mumu, I realise that Harlem is more than a postcode. It is a lived map with edges, rules and memories. He starts by placing Harlem from 110th to 155th, river to river, then pulls me back into 1990s New York street life, where outside means everything: block parties, basketball, water fights, loudspeakers on hot days and winter streets that feel emptier but never truly quiet. The nostalgia sits beside the afterimage of the 1980s crack epidemic, a crisis that shaped what children saw, what adults feared and how neighbourhoods learnt to survive.
That wider history becomes personal when he talks about how the crack era slowed down rather than vanished, and how family members were caught in it, recovered and carried the scars. Growing up in Harlem also meant growing up fast. He tells me about taking buses alone to school in Spanish Harlem, getting lost as a child and ending up in Washington Heights at night, terrified and crying. A police officer becomes an unexpected guardian, a reminder that safety sometimes arrives through strangers, even in systems that can also threaten families. It is a vivid picture of urban childhood, where independence looks brave right up until it turns dangerous.
Family sits at the centre of everything. Mumu describes a father shaped by Islam, connected to Black Panther organising and the Muslim Islamic Brotherhood, and determined to keep a large blended family together. That faith brings structure, but it also brings fear and violence, including being pulled out of church and punished for crossing religious lines. Alongside this is deep tenderness for his mum, who is “sweet” and beloved, but becomes seriously ill with kidney failure. He speaks with the intimacy of a carer, remembering routines, TV nights, jokes and the everyday labour of love that fills a home when illness becomes normal.
The most painful thread is what remained unsaid. Mumu knew he was gay from early childhood, asked the questions out loud, then learnt to hide the truth from nearly everyone, including the person he felt closest to. He describes the pressure of being Black, Muslim and a young man in a time when HIV stigma and homophobia were everywhere, including friends who threatened violence. That context explains why secrecy felt like survival, and why grief later carried an extra weight. The conversation holds the complexity of identity in conservative environments without reducing it to a single moment.
As the timeline moves forward, music becomes a bridge between memory and identity. He names the artists and sounds that scored his youth, from Slick Rick and Big Daddy Kane to dancehall and reggae, painting a picture of Harlem culture that is joyful, loud and communal. Adult life lands with a different rhythm: living near the same public housing development, working as a station supervisor in the New York City subway system and preparing to enforce fares and face the daily aggression that comes with public‑facing roles. It is a grounded look at the invisible work that keeps a city moving.
COVID‑19 changes the tone again, turning the subway into something eerie and dangerous, with fewer riders, more vulnerability and stories of violence that never fully reached mainstream news. Loss becomes immediate when he speaks about his brother dying during the pandemic, and how that fear helped him stop drinking when he reached the same age. Yet the episode does not end in despair. Travel to Madrid and dreams of London reopen possibility, juggling returns as a surprising turning point, and the future becomes practical: save, invest, retire, buy land, grow fruit and veg and build stability on his own terms.
