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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2014largely White, built on racial covenants\u2014is not where he is \u201csupposed\u201d 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\u2019s untold stories. Each chapter is a new exploration: a trip to the Maryland shore is an occasion to dilate on Frederick Douglass\u2019s complicated legacy, an encounter at a Hopkins shuttle-bus stop becomes a meditation on public transportation and policing, and Jackson\u2019s beleaguered commitment to his church opens a pathway to reimagine an urban community through jazz. Described as \u201cangry, tender, incisive, and bracingly eloquent,\u201d Shelter<\/em> is an extraordinary biography of a city and a celebration of our capacity for domestic thriving. Jackson\u2019s story leans on the essay to contain the raging absurdity of Black American life, establishing him as a maverick, essential writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3707,"template":"","acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/africana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-books\/3706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/africana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-books"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/africana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/faculty-books"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/africana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-books\/3706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3708,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/africana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-books\/3706\/revisions\/3708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/africana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/africana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}