STREET SHADOWS
A MEMOIR OF RACE, REBELLION, AND REDEMPTION
Street Shadows recounts Jerald Walker’s renunciation of the “thug life” he had embraced as a teenager on the South Side of Chicago in favor of the education and middle-class life his parents had always dreamed of for their children. By turns ironic, humorous, angry, and poignant, Walker’s narrative dramatically captures his pursuit and embodiment of the “American dream”: the effort to rise above obstacles such as racism and poverty through hard work and determination.
Reviews
Always this inner wrestling, which also resonates on the level of race. Mr. Walker’s struggle for faith is also the struggle of the black inner city he depicts. And there are no excuses in this brave book. It is a watershed—perhaps ‘post-racial’—memoir because it lets us see a black man as Everyman, a man on his way in the world and uninterested in the consolations of blame.
I feel as if I know Jerald Walker not just through his words but through his heart. This is a must-read for everyone who cares about the questions and the quest that being a human requires.
It is an experiment in finding the point of equilibrium where the self can emerge as the dispassionate and compassionate interpreter of experience. Walker never fails to be honest where truth is needed and he never fails to be gracious where generosity is possible
On the basis of this impressive literary debut, I predict that we’ll be reading Jerald Walker for years to come.
In these absorbing essays, Jerald Walker adds race to the commonplace (a little girl helping her younger brother with his homework, a job interview, a family dining out, a teenager crashing the family car) and shows us something knotty, fraught, and unforgettable, not just about race and the commonplace, ‘living while black,’ but about living while human.
In his debut, Walker deftly subverts expectations of urban angst and braggadocio.… Walker’s fresh take on the labyrinth of urban race relations is one of his memoir’s great pleasures.… Several cuts above standard memoirs.
Jerald Walker’s How to Make a Slave is notable for its persistence of vision. These essays are relentlessly humane even as they stare into America’s split, racist heart. And like America and Americans, this book is both funny and fucked up, and neither can exist without the other.
With broad appeal and pertinent timing, Walker's first effort could be the pick-it-up and pass-it-on memoir of the season.
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