In the Afterword, Hakim describes the ostracization he felt from family and friends when he went to work on the street. He speaks of his dissatisfaction with people on the street being “reduced to a horrific National Geographic portrait come to life” and being portrayed “as if they were born on these streets and have no past or other life experience” (319). To provide context for how he came to be a book vendor, he describes his work as a legal proofreader at a law firm in the late 1980s, the disrespect he encountered through interactions with the white attorneys at the firm, and his unexpected firing during an employee-review meeting without any prior warning. The shock of that incident leads him to leave the corporate world for one of entrepreneurship and self-employment on the sidewalk.

He recounts an ordinary encounter with Duneier that set the events of the book in motion: a mention of a Rolodex that Hakim possesses. The Rolodex—more typical in an office setting than on a street vendor’s table—causes Duneier to take greater notice of Hakim. When Duneier wants to write about Hakim, the book vendor is initially hesitant: “How does a subject take part in an ethnographic study in which he has very little faith and survive as something more than a subject and less than an author?” (321).