A Lovely Place, A Fighting Place, A Charmer

Book excerpt: A “diverse collection” of essays, stories, and poems about Baltimore that provide “a wide-ranging account of what the city feels like today” (Baltimore Magazine). To many outsiders, Baltimore--sometimes derisively called “Mobtown” or “Bodymore”—is a city famous for its poverty and violence, twin ills that have been compounded by decades of racial segregation and the loss of manufacturing jobs. But that portrait has only given us a skewed view of a truly unique and diverse American city, the place that produced Babe Ruth, Elijah Cummings, Nancy Pelosi, Edgar Allan Poe, John Waters, Frank Zappa, Billie Holiday, and Thurgood Marshall, among other notables. In over thirty-five essays, poems, and short stories, the authors take an unfiltered look at the ins and outs of Baltimore's past and present. You’ll hear about the first time an umbrella appeared in the Inner Harbor, nineteenth-century grave robbers, and the city’s history with redlining and blockbusting. But you’ll also get a deeper sense of what life is like in Baltimore today, including stories about urban gardening in Bolton Hill, the slow demise of local journalism, what life was like in the city during COVID, and the legacy of Freddie Gray. As Ron Kipling Williams writes in his essay about the city’s magnetic appeal, “Baltimore has always been a city worth fighting for,” and running through all these pieces is the story of Baltimore’s resilience. Edited by an award-winning author and a former staff writer for The Wire, this anthology offers an unfiltered look at Baltimore, far more nuanced than the stories that are generally told about it. “Let[s] the people of this city define their home through reflections in prose, poetry, recipes, and even a comic strip . . . speaks to the heart of the city.” —Baltimore Fishbowl