Shelter: A Black Tale of Homeland, Baltimore

by Lawrence Jackson

Overview

*A Kirkus Best Book of 2022*
A stirring consideration of homeownership, fatherhood, race, faith, and the history of an American city.

In 2016, Lawrence Jackson accepted a new job in Baltimore, searched for schools for his sons, and bought a house. It would all be unremarkable but for the fact that he had grown up in West Baltimore and now found himself teaching at Johns Hopkins, whose vexed relationship to its neighborhood, to the city and its history, provides fodder for this captivating memoir in essays.

With sardonic wit, Jackson describes his struggle to make a home in the city that had just been convulsed by the uprising that followed the murder of Freddie Gray. His new neighborhood, Homeland—largely White, built on racial covenants—is not where he is “supposed” to live. But his purchase, and his desire to pass some inheritance on to his children, provides a foundation for him to explore his personal and spiritual history, as well as Baltimore’s untold stories. Each chapter is a new exploration: a trip to the Maryland shore is an occasion to dilate on Frederick Douglass’s complicated legacy; an encounter at a Hopkins shuttle-bus stop becomes a meditation on public transportation and policing; and Jackson’s beleaguered commitment to his church opens a pathway to reimagine an urban community through jazz.

Shelter is an extraordinary biography of a city and a celebration of our capacity for domestic thriving. Jackson’s story leans on the essay to contain the raging absurdity of Black American life, establishing him as a maverick, essential writer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644450833
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	04/19/2022
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,061,684
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Lawrence Jackson is a biographer and critic whose work has appeared in the Paris Review, Harper's Magazine, n+1, and Best American Essays. He teaches English and history at Johns Hopkins and directs the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts.

Table of Contents

Advent: Color Storms Rising Almost to a Hurricane 3

Christmas: Long Quarter at River Bend 49

Epiphany: Sunday Boys 89

Lent: Appraisement of Negroes at the Folly, or Dinner 137

Eostre in Lafayette Square 179

White Sunday: "An Invasion of African Negroes" 227

Ordinary Time: The Gentle Brushing Fescue 273

Acknowledgments 315

List of Illustrations 317

Notes 319

Editorial Reviews

12/20/2021

A Black man makes a conflicted return to his roots in this bittersweet meditation on race and belonging. In 2016, Jackson (My Father’s Name) moved back to his hometown of Baltimore to take a professorship in English at Johns Hopkins University, and bought a house in the upscale white neighborhood of Homeland—formerly a slave owner’s estate and a far cry from the inner-city surroundings of his boyhood. He found the battle to maintain his house to the homeowners association’s standards a source of satisfaction—the yard-work scenes are epic and engrossing—but also of anxiety as he worried about implied accusations by old friends of Uncle Tom–ism. On that peg he hangs an atmospheric history of Black Baltimore, sketching vivid profiles of famous locals—a tragic Billie Holiday, an ambitious Frederick Douglass who “refused to believe that the rules... applied to him”—while revisiting old haunts, surveying political wrangles over poverty and crime, and taking in a King Day parade that gets stymied by horse manure. In resonant prose, Jackson ably conveys the feuding aspirations and unease of the Black middle class: “I want my son to have the confidence of the people who owned the land, without having to hate himself for it.” The result is a stirring reflection on the meaning of home. Agent: Regina Brooks, Serendipity Literary. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"An extraordinary dual portrait of the author and his hometown—angry, tender, incisive, and bracingly eloquent.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“[Shelter] is told in wide-ranging essays that touch on subjects including the joys and challenges of Black fatherhood, the overlooked history of [Jackson's] new, mostly White neighborhood of Homeland, his connection to his childhood church, the perils of Black upward mobility, the pain of divorce, and the everyday challenges of homeownership. The book is by turns searing, informative and funny, as Jackson explores both serious issues and absurdities of his life and his city.”—Michael A. Fletcher, The Washington Post

“[A] bittersweet meditation on race and belonging. . . . In resonant prose, Jackson ably conveys the feuding aspirations and unease of the Black middle class. . . . The result is a stirring reflection on the meaning of home.”—Publishers Weekly

“There are an endless number of wonderful things to say about Lawrence Jackson’s Shelter—from luminous to breathtaking to just being outright admirable. Jackson essentially gifts his reader with two stories that are skillfully and beautifully intertwined: the work to create a great home for himself and his two sons, and a history of Baltimore, the hometown that helped create him. Along the way we are treated to so much that helps those stories come to life—from Jackson’s history with cars to the ingredients of 19th century cornbread to Johns Hopkins University’s treatment of Black people. It is all a lovely mix. Jackson has the mind of a historian, but he is also something of a poet—just note these words: ‘a person whose strength is more meringue than muscle.’ Shelter is a singular achievement.”—Edward P. Jones

“Shelter is an intriguing meditation on past and present Baltimore, as reflected through the eyes of a black native son. Lawrence Jackson, deeply ambivalent about returning after years away from his once-slaveholding hometown, is a keen observer of the complex interplay between race, time, and place. Surprisingly funny and often unsettling, Shelter is a fascinating read.”—Nathan McCall, author of Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America

"Shelter is written in sharply beautiful, descriptive prose. Jackson’s love of language is woven into each sentence, alongside his understanding of the current moment as informed by the depth of all that came before."—Kristi King, Christian Century

From the Publisher

★ 2022-01-11
The misunderstood city of Baltimore receives a probing portrait by a returning native son.

In 2016, Jackson, a noted historian and biographer, returned from a professorship in Atlanta to his hometown of Baltimore, where he had been offered a joint appointment in history and English by Johns Hopkins, and he now directs the Billie Holiday Project for Liberation Arts. It was a year after the police killing of Freddie Gray set the city aflame, and Jackson's purchase of a home in a historically White neighborhood is the point of departure for a series of essays that seamlessly blend history, journalism, and memoir. The author’s command of factual detail is matched by the laser clarity of his childhood memories, whether offering a taxonomy of his elementary school teachers or recollecting the loan of a landscaping tool by a neighbor. Jackson clarifies issues like whether Johns Hopkins should have a private police force with a full complement of reporting, analysis, introspection, and lament. One of myriad evocative sentences: "When ‘Prince of Peace’ rang out over the congregation in 1989 at St. James, I could claim to have experienced a shared spiritual presence, a palpable thickening of emotional connection with people who were not materially engaged. This is my main experience of transcendence outside of a nightclub dancing to deep house music, and only then on those rare occasions when I had sweated through my pants." Writing about bus drivers, the author showcases the brilliant embodiment of geography that will make this book come alive for non-Baltimoreans: "They displayed inimitable sangfroid as they plowed the twenty-ton behemoths into the rapid flow of traffic on Druid Hill Avenue before making the daring left turn at Cloverdale basketball court, all the while we passengers were showcased rarities, like the rotating carousel of pork loins in the window of Leon’s Pig Pen." Those are only two of countless passages of sparkling prose.

An extraordinary dual portrait of the author and his hometown—angry, tender, incisive, and bracingly eloquent.

Kirkus Reviews