Through novels, memoirs, essays, and poems that hit shelves this year, we’ve taken journeys both near and far and learned more about our world and city.

We uncovered secret, historical letters sent to and from Baltimore, and we took quiet walks through Pennsylvania forests while watching the natural ecosystem change each year. We traveled alongside the much-talked-about figure Wallis Simpson to lavish parties at Buckingham Palace, and we dove head-first into the depths of heroin addiction in a 1990s Baltimore spun out of control.

We learned more about systemic racism, mass incarceration, the modern-day art world, immigration, and how to make public spaces safer and more inclusive. We also quieted our minds to take in zen-like poetry and moments in nature worth savoring.

Here’s a look back at our favorite reads of the year, all of which have ties to Baltimore.

The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose
Chris Wilson with Bret Witter (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
After reading 400 pages of Chris Wilson’s memoir, one word stands out: endgame. He shares the sometimes heart-wrenching, occasionally heartwarming account of growing up in a violent Washington, D.C. neighborhood, catching a life sentence for murder at 18, and the creation of his “Master Plan.” As he grows from boy to man, we see him check off each item on that list—get a high school diploma, eat no junk food, get an AA degree—while continuing to add bigger dreams. Beating all odds, his sentence is reduced, and he eventually arrives in Baltimore as a free man with the objective to help other “returning citizens.” We see him go from sleeping on a friend’s couch, traveling by borrowed bike, and mowing lawns for a living, to starting his own business (Barclay Investment Corporation), sharing his story with people all over the country, and becoming an active, positive member of his community. It’s a story of perseverance, hope, and redemption. And he also sets forth a challenge for readers: what is our endgame? And how are we going to get there?

The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcee Who Became the Duchess of Windsor
Anna Pasternak (Touchstone)
This colorful biography peels away the layers of one of the most talked-about—and perhaps misunderstood—figures in modern history: Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced Baltimore native who stole the heart of the Prince of Wales and, so it’s been said, ultimately caused his abdication of the throne after he became King of England. Anna Pasternak aims to set the record straight and, in some ways, rewrites history. What people call a fairytale love story between WE (Wallis and Edward’s shorthand for themselves) was, in many ways, a tragedy, and though Wallis was often blamed for King Edward’s abdication, it’s evident—through letters, as well as testimonies of close friends—that Wallis did everything in her power to stop him. Details about Wallis—her impeccable sense of style, her sensitivity and nervous temperament behind a cool and confident exterior—bring us closer to the reality of who she was. The book also tells us a good bit about Edward—that he had a secret love of crocheting, that both he and Wallis struggled with insecurities about their sexual identities. A touching moment comes in the epilogue, when we see Pasternak’s personal connection to the story and the lives of both the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder
John Waters (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
John Waters’ flair for writing and his laugh-out-loud humor had us flying through his “tarnished wisdom.” And what wisdom it is: Learn public speaking; “go Hollywood,” if given the chance; be willing to change everything, he tells us. Juicy anecdotes from his career—fighting in court for his Pecker film title; possibly being the only director who didn’t cast Brad Pitt after an audition, people whispering “demented forever” when passing him on the street, how he was asked to be celebrant for Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder’s wedding but convinced them not to wed—run alongside his thoughts on religion, politics, gay rights, art, sex, drugs, even death. And what his restaurant would be like, were he to open one. This collection of essays is a must for all John Waters fans but also for young, aspiring filmmakers and artists who could use a little help from this larger-than-life personality.

Snowballs for Severance
Richie Frieman (The Omnibus Publishing)
This picture book would be great fun for readers of any age, were it simply about a 9-year-old boy who changed a century-old law in his hometown to allow snowball fights. But this story is even more remarkable because it’s true. Through research and interviews with town hero Dane Best and his family, Richie Frieman wrote and illustrated this quirky tale, complete with direct quotes and cartoonish versions of the characters who make up Severance, Colorado. He includes a short questionnaire with Dane and photos at the end, though Dane is written so true to character, by that point, we feel like we already know this child activist.

Fake Like Me
Barbara Bourland (Grand Central Publishing)
Baltimore-based Barbara Bourland raises a magnifying glass to the contemporary art world in this brilliant satire. A cast of familiar-yet-eccentric characters plays out multiple storylines—a bizarre mystery (why did the young and famous New York artist Carey Logan drown herself in a lake?), a love story (really, a few), an artist’s coming of age—but at its core, it’s a penetrating, insightful discourse into what it means to be a practicing artist navigating the cut-throat art world. It’s a must-read for art scholars and students, who will appreciate all the practical and existential questions the narrator faces—from taking on an impossible deadline after two years’ worth of paintings are lost in a studio fire, to pondering the gray area between being an artist and being a commodity. And your jaw will drop more than a few times throughout Bourland’s story, which is painted with rich imagery, exquisite details, and sensual delight.

We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America
D. Watkins (Atria Books)
D. Watkins is a master at his craft and has seemingly endless stories to share about Baltimore and the wisdom he’s gleaned from living here. The New York Times best-selling author of The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America and The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir is back with another fresh take on life in East Baltimore and how his own life has changed since he’s seen success as a writer. Here, the University of Baltimore professor aims to round out the stories being told about black culture in America. His down-to-earth, casual writing style allows us to easily enter his world, and his sense of humor tends to balance some of the heavy subject matter. Some passages—including one in which he repeats the phrase “black lives don’t matter” alongside horrifying examples to prove his point—are painfully chilling. This book transcends memoir when Watkins offers solutions, including a checklist that breaks down systemic racism and allows us to think more deeply about how we can effect positive change in our communities.

Intrusive Beauty
Joseph J. Capista (Ohio University Press)
Contemporary poetry rarely has a melodic cadence, as rhythmic poetry is somehow considered unsophisticated. But Joseph J. Capista doesn’t shy away from the joys of rollicking through language’s innate richness of sound, as he weaves narratives about Baltimore, life as a husband and father, and the elegance of the natural world. The Towson University professor has the ability to see beauty in all places, and through his observations, he allows us to see it, too.

The Long Blink
Brian Kuebler (Behler Publications)
In WMAR News’ investigative journalist Brian Kuebler’s first book, he delves much deeper into the true story of a Baltimore family torn apart by tragedy after a trucker falls asleep at the wheel and kills Ed Slattery’s wife and leaves his son disabled. We watch as a stunned Ed grapples with his new life in the wake of such a horrific event and how he moved through his grief to help heal not just those closest to him but others affected by trucking accidents. He rises from victim to activist, going to Capitol Hill to fight for safer trucking laws. But underneath his fight change, this is a story about how one man survived devastating trauma and used his pain to help others. The Long Blink is the epitome of a page-turner. Once you pick it up, don’t expect to put it down until you’ve reached its very shocking and explosive end.

Chasing a Flawed Sun
Daniel McGhee (Phoenix Rising Publishing)
Perhaps you’re thinking we don’t need another memoir about the opioid crisis. But each experience through addiction is unique, yet universal themes connect all these stories. From page one, Daniel McGhee races down to the depths of hell on Earth and drags the reader along with him, every inch of the way. As painful as this memoir is to read—one horrifying, self-destructive story after the next—one can only imagine how painful it must’ve been to write, much less live. McGhee grew up a white, middle-class kid in Baltimore County, and in this gut-wrenchingly honest narrative, he takes us down the rabbit hole into his heroin addiction—but not before years of drinking every day and getting high on cocaine, Special K, and ecstasy (and selling them all, too), while constantly instigating fights, jumping people, pulling guns on people (seemingly nothing was off limits) and finding himself in and out of rehab—and prison. When retelling his story, he sometimes interrupts his own train of thought to comment on how ashamed he is, how lost and clueless he once was. Many addicts don’t find themselves living the happy ending, but this book serves as some hope. It’s a story every addict must know deeply, and this book would certainly resonate with them. But perhaps its greater gift lies in showing people who have not experienced addiction firsthand what it’s like—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—and why addicts keep “chasing a flawed sun.”

Father’s Day Creek: Flying fishing, fatherhood and the last best place on Earth
Dan Rodricks (Apprentice House Press)
Baltimore Sun columnist Dan Rodricks’ writing seems at ease in this collection of anecdotes and reflections on years spent fly fishing at a magical stream in Pennsylvania that he’s named Father’s Day Creek, in honor of visits with his father-in-law each year for the holiday and stopping by the natural respite while there. It’s a place he calls his “spirit-home,” and he insists that everyone should have one. As its subtitle suggests, Rodricks provides spectacular notes on the art of fly fishing, the devastation and regeneration of natural waterways because of various ecological factors, as well as the complexity of fatherhood, including father figures whom he calls “male mothers” and cultural changes that have altered the role of fathering. He also inevitably weaves together the connection between fatherhood and fishing. Worth noting: the forward was written by fly fishing legend Lefty Kreh just a few weeks before he died. In all, the book is a tribute to the simple yet sacred moments in life, and his honest, laid-back style of introspective storytelling feels reminiscent of a day spent in the woods, casting a line into the water, and forging a connection—be it with fathers, sons, nature, or yourself.

The light turns red at President and Pratt streets in Harbor East and a half dozen teenagers in T-shirts, jeans, and unlaced high tops spring from the grassy median, holding up Windex spray bottles in one hand and gas station-style squeegees in the other. Two skinny younger boys jump into the street first. A couple of older kids shout and laugh at each other over the idling traffic. It’s a clear, bright Sunday in May. The school year is almost over.

They try to make eye contact through rolled up windows.

“I got you,” says one of the teenagers, leaning over the hood of a Honda, spraying a dab on the windshield.

“How are you?” a kid says to another driver. “What’s up?”

“I got you.”

A second teenager sprays a shot of soapy water on a windshield, trying to drum up business. The woman behind the wheel simply continues to stare at her phone.

To still another driver: “You look good, bro. You look sharp. You wanna wash?”

A 40ish white man in a Range Rover frantically waves his arms. “No, no, no! Don’t touch my car.”

A young woman in a Honda Accord smiles as she shakes her head toward James, the self-possessed 16-year-old high school student who serves as this group’s informal crew chief. “I don’t have any money,” she says. But then she offers him her French fries, which he accepts. Before the light changes, four drivers get quick windshield wipes. They appear happy, at least content, to hand over a buck or two for a slightly better view of the world. An equal number of drivers appear annoyed. The rest look relieved they avoided the kids’ face-to-face pitch.

It’s such a familiar scene by now in Baltimore, the two-minute productions play out like a choreographed dance. “The overall reaction? I’d say 50-50,” James says as he steps back to the median as cars begin rolling again. “Some people definitely resent you. Hey, I get it. You’re walkin’ up on their car. Other people tell you they’re glad you’re out here making an honest dollar.

“Most of the time,” James continues, “it’s not even about us. Everybody’s bringing their own stuff they got going on and it gets directed at you.”

Baltimore’s “squeegee kids” have been a source of hot, racialized debate, law enforcement confusion, and political puzzlement for decades. In 1985, the City Council voted 11-7, splitting along white-black lines, to ban the practice and call for arrests. Black council members saw the proposal as racist because the young entrepreneurs the legislation targeted were almost exclusively black. Congressman Parren Mitchell, the first African-American to represent Maryland, decried the hysteria around the squeegee kids in his regular column in The Afro. So did former Sun columnist Roger Simon, generating a maelstrom of letters to the editor.

Then-police chief Bishop L. Robinson, the City’s first black police commissioner, sought the ban because some drivers had complained they felt threatened by the youth and because he was concerned about the squeegee kids’ safety. (Indeed, a 14-year-old was killed the next year by a tractor-trailer.) Facing backlash, Mayor William Donald Schaefer sought time to study the issue. Ultimately, the law went into effect with a compromise—the removal of the threat of incarceration—and stands to this day. None of this flap and fury makes sense to Derrick, who is two years younger than James and has been working a squeegee alongside him since they were 10 and 12, respectively. He says after all this time he still can’t get his head around the daily gamut of responses he receives, and endures, from adult drivers.

“Honestly? It’s confusing,” the 14-year-old says. “Someone will give you a $10 bill and thank you, and the very next person will cuss at you.” Derrick and James, like most of the teenagers hustling at this end of I-83—built, of course, in the 1960s to ferry suburbanites in and out of the city—live in the Douglass Homes housing project near The Johns Hopkins Hospital. “How do you make sense of that when you didn’t do one thing different?”

“What do you want us to do for money?” James says. “Cut grass? That’s a white people thing. There ain’t no grass around here.

-J.M. Giordano

Ever since the battle lines were drawn in the ’80s, the squeegee controversy has risen and fallen every few years, typically driven by outrage from white commuters following a fresh report that someone near a squeegee location grabbed a wallet off a car seat, kicked a door, or hurled a water bottle at a vehicle. Each episode inevitably casts everyone with a squeegee in hand in the same dark light. (When a husband who killed his wife falsely claimed last year that a panhandler had stabbed her to death at an East Baltimore intersection, the initial blowback wasn’t only felt by panhandlers, but squeegee youth, too. None other than Oprah said she’d think twice before ever rolling down her window again.)

In 2017, after renewed complaints—BPD fields multiple calls daily that report squeegee workers soliciting in traffic—former Mayor Catherine Pugh launched a “Squeegee Corps” initiative. Her office, estimating there were about 100 squeegee kids they could help get off the street, put together car washes outside City Hall and elsewhere. However, a sustainable program was never put in place.

Last fall, the cycle started again. A driver in Federal Hill accused a black male (whom he later admitted was older and not part of the regular squeegee group with which he was familiar) of shattering the rear window of his SUV, posting a video of the encounter to a South Baltimore Community Facebook page, which went viral. A week later, Downtown Partnership announced plans to place unarmed security guards at intersections to “monitor” the actions of the squeegee kids at a cost of $3,000 per week.

 

“What do you want us to do for money? Cut grass?”

 

Two weeks later, a 10-year-old squeegee kid was nearly killed in a terrifying crash—also caught on video—after being struck by a car at President and Pratt streets.

Shortly afterward, Pugh vowed to create a $2-million annual effort, with at least some of the money coming from private sources, to “address the squeegee problem” and develop the next iteration of the Squeegee Corps to move the kids off the street corners. Following Pugh’s resignation, that plan is now up in the air.

“Look, I’m probably more liberal in my views than most of my counterparts,” says Major Richard Gibson. “To me, this is a social problem. It’s similar to the panhandlers, sex workers, and homeless. People complain, it’s illegal solicitation like panhandling, so we deal with it. You get them to move off the intersection. But these aren’t really law enforcement issues unless they do something that’s legitimately criminal.”

A former high-ranking police official, who did not want his name used because of his current job, was more adamant about getting the squeegee kids off the street, similarly lumping them with panhandlers, sex workers, drug dealers, the dirt bike-riding 12 0’Clock Boys, and the homeless—as well as the large groups of youth who from time to time have stirred tensions with the police at the Inner Harbor. “They are a part of what people see as the chaos of Baltimore when they drive into the city,” he says.

The squeegee kids don’t see themselves that way at all.

“Everybody got a reason to be out here, or they wouldn’t be here,” James says later in the afternoon. “Not everybody has two parents at home or people looking after them the way they should.”

Derrick uses some of the money he earns—$100-$150 after six to seven hours on a busy weekend—to help his mother pay rent. “I’ve got four siblings,” he says. “I come out before school some mornings to have money in my pocket and get something to eat after. Who else is going to help us?”

Donovan, 19, wearing a Ravens cap, is among the oldest here—most are between 10 and 18—and knows firsthand the other alternatives to making money for black males growing up in poverty in Baltimore. He got caught selling drugs when he was younger. “I’ve seen friends die and go to jail with long sentences,” he says. “I’ve seen some pretty terrible stuff, and I don’t want that.” He picked up a squeegee a year ago, even though police do charge squeegee workers with aggressive panhandling and illegal solicitation from time to time because “I’m my only source of income,” he says. Young guys like Derrick and James are actually positive role models to the boys in their neighborhood, Donovan adds, because they aren’t selling drugs and have their own money to buy shoes and clothes, as well as the occasional soda for an 8- or 10-year-old. That said, Donovan adds, they get profiled regularly in public places.

“If we go to eat at a restaurant after being out all day, what we get is, ‘No, no, no. Too many of you,’” he says. “And we got money. That doesn’t happen if you’re white. Same when it comes to using the bathroom. Can’t use the bathroom even when we are buying something. Same at the mall, security following you around. Secret shoppers, following you around. You’ve got have your money out when you’re in a store or you get chased out.”

Personable and thoughtful, Donovan says he plans to go back to school and would like to learn how to buy and invest in real estate. James, who’s adding a job washing dishes, wants to own a car wash after he graduates and employ some of his cohorts.

“Instead of them experiencing unfair treatment for bringing income into their homes, they would benefit from more outreach support—school and career counseling and other services, ” says India Bell, a Baltimore social worker and former resident advisor with the Department of Juvenile Services who regularly engages the young men along Martin Luther King Boulevard near Route 40. “Things have fallen apart in this city, in this country. We have long incarcerated black males at disproportionate rates, and that has impacted the families and neighborhoods where these kids are from. As well as segregation, redlining, and disinvestment. I know—I’m from one of those neighborhoods.

“The bottom line,” Bell adds, “is that kids shouldn’t have to spend their childhoods out in the street earning money.”

Baltimore author D. Watkins, editor at large for Salon, went from dealing drugs to a career as a teacher and writer. He spends a lot of time in local schools and knows some of the same squeegee workers that Bell does along MLK Boulevard, including a former high-school student he taught at the Friendship Academy. Watkins also made a few dollars as a squeegee kid in the late ’80s and early ’90s. “A lot of people don’t understand the perspective of these kids,” Watkins says. “They are scared to interact with them and a lot of people get frustrated with them. Everybody is scared of everybody and nobody is talking to each other. Meanwhile, the former mayor initiated the Squeegee Corps, and that went away and she kind of abandoned them.”

 

“People sell drugs on the corner every day. I got no interest. Not for me.”

 

Kaye Whitehead, who teaches at Loyola University and hosts a WEAA talk show, echoes Bell and Watkins. “If this was a lacrosse team in the street raising money with buckets for a trip to play in a tournament, no one would have an issue,” she says. “We as a city need to lean in and find ways to support them. The folks who were doing this 40 years ago have grown up, but this generation is running up against the same problems.”

Bell stresses that no one believes it’s a good idea for children and teenagers to be bouncing through traffic at stop lights. But in a sense, she says, the squeegee corners are “safe spaces” for many kids. “They have a measure of independence, they can act like 15, 16, 17-year-olds. In their neighborhoods, there’s always a lot of trauma and stress, and they feel like they have to keep their guard up and watch their back.” In fact, one 14-year-old squeegee kid mentioned the threat of getting robbed by older teens and young men walking back to his own neighborhood in the evening with squeegee money in pocket.

Local business owner Chris Wilson, who did 16 years in prison for a crime committed while a juvenile, sees himself in the young men wielding squeegees. “I tell every single one of them I respect the hustle and I respect them trying to make a living,” says Wilson, author of The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose. “They’re doing all the things an entrepreneur does. They’re calculating how much cleaning supplies to buy, how much water to buy if they’re selling bottles of water, what’s the best time to work, the best location, how much they need to make. The next step is setting longer-term goals. Nobody teaches them how to set goals, make a plan, and then walk down that road.”

To Wilson’s point, some of the kids, concerned about public relations, have begun leaving soapy hearts on women’s windshields.

Nate, a lanky, charismatic 19-year-old who lives in the McCulloh Homes housing project in West Baltimore, says he had a job at Walmart at the Golden Ring Shopping Center, but the bus rides and taxes left him with little time and money to show for his effort. He started squeegeeing two-and-a-half years ago, trying to do both for a period, along with his friends Carlose, 22, Antoine, 17, and Derwood, 20, who was also hawking bottles of cold water for $1 on a recent Monday afternoon. He readily acknowledges quitting school in 10th grade was a mistake and wants to earn his GED. “You need school, and you need that degree,” says Nate. “When I quit, I couldn’t even have told you why I quit other than I was bored. But I realize I wasn’t getting what I needed from school, either.”

“I’d like to own my own business,” he continues. “Maybe start a small clothing line or open a food truck. Even a car wash down at the Rite-Aid parking lot,” he says, gesturing down the street, “would be a start and better than minimum wage. People sell drugs on the corner every day in Baltimore, and I got no interest. Helicopter surveillance, drama, and violence. Not for me. I don’t like it. We’re in entirely different lanes.”

The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose

Chris Wilson with Bret Witter (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

After reading Chris Wilson’s memoir, one word stands out: endgame. He shares his account of growing up in a violent D.C. neighborhood, receiving a life sentence for murder at 18, and the creation of his “Master Plan.” As he grows from boy to man, we see him check off each item on that list—get a high school diploma, get an AA degree—while continuing to add bigger dreams. Beating all odds, his sentence is reduced, and he ends up in Baltimore as a free man. We see him go from sleeping on a friend’s couch and mowing lawns for a living, to starting his own business (Barclay Investment Corporation), sharing his story with people all over the country, and becoming a positive member of his community. It’s a story of perseverance, hope, and redemption. And he also sets forth a challenge for readers: What is our endgame? And how are we going to get there?

Chris Wilson will be reading on February 9 at 7 p.m.at The Church of the Redeemer, 5603 N. Charles St. He will be joined by Wes Moore for a discussion on the path that led him to be an entrepreneur who employs returning citizens.

2 Parts Oxygen: How I Learned to Breathe

Tariq Touré (self-published)

This collection sometimes feels like a self-help book in the guise of poetry, complete with affirmations and messages of self-love, healing, and transcendence over collective wounds. Touré, who grew up in West Baltimore and now lives with his family in Northern Virginia, writes of stray bullets and the ancestral oppression of the black community, but also how his Islamic faith helped him overcome obstacles, with frequent references to the Holy Quran. Some poems read like ecstatic, 21st-century prayers with a call to action. He looks at racial injustices through a micro and macro lens, exploring its personal and cultural repercussions. The new father wrestles with identity, not just his own but the generations to come, and his—and their—connection to the past. What’s most striking about Touré’s collection of about 100 poems is its ability to contain so much gravity and yet allow so much light to pierce through, sometimes in the same breath.

See our full interview with writer Tariq Touré.

For those who are parents and those who have been parented, the American Visionary Art Museum’s newest exhibition, Parenting: An Art Without a Manual offers a meditation on the role of role models, parental figures, and family—in all their shapes and sizes. From the warm and fuzzy to the nightmarish and traumatizing, the show is a contemplative, visual collection of stories on a theme, and it will most likely expand your definition of parenting.

It opens on Saturday and remains on view through September 1, 2019, in the nationally recognized museum in Federal Hill, with special events planned throughout its duration, including a free summit on March 24 that will bring together world-renowned speakers.

“Each year, we pick one grand theme that has always bedeviled or inspired humanity,” says Rebecca Hoffberger, the founding director of AVAM and co-curator of the show with Anna Gulyavskaya. “We’re all parenting, whether we choose to have children or not.”

As is usual with AVAM shows, Parenting is both visually and intellectually satisfying, with some of the most well-researched and thoughtful text you’re likely to see at an art exhibit. Statistics and the latest findings—on childhood trauma, parent-child attachment, grandparents becoming full-time parents because of the effects of the opioid epidemic, images of the developing brain, and more—as well as quotes witty and wise are posted throughout the gallery spaces to complement the visual art.

Bobby Adams’ powerful installation Models and Critics, for example, depicts his family—mother, father, and two children, one of whom is a young Bobby—on a couch. Their mannequin bodies are topped off with flat pieces of cardboard that display black-and-white photographs of their faces. Adams explains during a preview of the exhibition that his mother is in her nightgown, reading a book to his brother, while his father is dressed in nice clothes, having probably just gotten home from an evening of “womanizing,” and is yelling at Bobby, leather belt in hand. “My father always said I was stupid and called me a bastard,” he says in an emotional retelling of his childhood story to a crowd of journalists and exhibiting artists.

In another room, a long wall is dotted with several life-sized cutouts of a small child—each one with the same face but a different outfit. The work—Fifty Girls in Food Sack Dresses, by Linda St. John—explores the future of parenting and “designer babies,” while posing questions about what parenting will look like as people’s lifespans increase and families grow to include several generations.

And what would an AVAM show be without postcard images from Frank Warren, of Post Secret fame, or a piece by Baltimore’s beloved mosaic artist Loring Cornish, or the large spiritual work of Alex Grey? All of the above find their place in this show, alongside artists who have never been exhibited at AVAM until now.

Baltimore’s Chris Wilson makes his AVAM debut with a large abstract painting titled Momma’s Boy. Through it, he tells the story of his mother, who took her own life after struggling with drug and alcohol abuse, used as a coping mechanism to survive a horrific trauma. “In this painting, my brother and I attend Mom’s funeral,” he writes in the description of the piece. “I remain in the back because I am afraid to see my mother deceased. It was the hardest I’ve ever cried, so white tears are all over the canvas.”

Additional pieces explore surrogate parents, the father-daughter bond, children living in refugee and diaspora situations, and what it feels like to be an orphan.

A compelling sculpture by Allen David Christian called Piano Family: Adagio, Amarosa, and Bucky depicts three figures made of piano parts and is enhanced by a quote installed above it, from Michael Levine: “Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.”

Chris Wilson takes a seat at a long wooden table in the University of Baltimore law library, 12 floors above Mt. Royal Avenue. He has the bright, airy space almost to himself in the mid-afternoon. Wearing a dark business suit, dress shirt, and wide-knotted, royal-purple tie, Wilson is all business as he lights up a MacBook Pro and bows his clean-shaven head to concentrate on the screen. His boyish face and alert brown eyes make him look younger than his 36 years, which is fitting because Wilson isn’t an attorney or law student, but an undergrad at UB’s Merrick School of Business, where he’ll complete his degree in business administration this December. Specializing in entrepreneurship, he has won business plan competitions, been named a Ratcliffe Scholar, and earned a place in the school’s rigorous Entrepreneurship Fellows Program.

In addition to his course load, Wilson is the founder, owner, and operator of the Barclay Investment Corporation—a small general contracting company—as well as the House of DaVinci, a startup furniture repair and upholstery business.

In short, he’s a busy man because he’s making up for lost time. In fact, Wilson isn’t supposed to be here at all. At 17, he killed a man. Tried as an adult for first-degree murder, he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. By all odds, Wilson should still be serving time at Patuxent Institution in Jessup, where he served more than a decade of the 16 years he spent behind bars.

However, less than four years after his release following a reconsideration of his sentence by a new judge, Wilson is now employing other ex-offenders at both of his enterprises, building on experience gained as a community organizer at the Greater Homewood Community Corporation. He also has become an advocate for juvenile justice and sentencing reform, and counts best-selling author Wes Moore and the former NAACP head Ben Jealous among his friends and clients.

Inside the law library, he takes time to appreciate the sweeping view of Baltimore from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“I like being high up over the city,” he says. “I can look out and see The Belvedere Hotel, where I restored furniture. I can also see Station North and Barclay, where I do a lot of my work. Across the street is the business school, which is really important to me. It’s where I turned my life around.”

As a boy, Wilson grew up mostly with his grandparents in Northeast Washington, D.C. He loved to read in bed at night, even risking his grandmother’s wrath by crossing a busy thoroughfare to check out books from the East Capitol branch of the D.C. Public Library. But by the start of the 1990s, as crack and killings swept the nation’s capital, he was doing his reading—everything from books on dinosaurs to Aesop’s fables and Greek myths—curled up on the floor where he slept as a precaution against stray bullets.

Eventually, after the shooting death of a cousin, Wilson went to live full-time with his mom, a single parent of five in suburban Prince George’s County. “A nice neighborhood,” Wilson recalls, but not the refuge it appeared to be. His mother fell under the control of a physically abusive boyfriend, who was later convicted of sexually assaulting her. In the process, she turned to alcohol and drugs. Meanwhile, the violence in D.C. began spilling over into P.G. County.

“How can you expect a kid to be normal when people are dropping like flies?”

Against this backdrop, Wilson stopped caring about school, tuning out through booze, weed, and other substances. “I buried a friend every couple of months,” he says, reflecting on his teenage years. “How can you expect a kid to be normal when people are dropping like flies? I’m arming up,” he remembers telling himself. “I’m going to start carrying weapons.” Quickly, he accumulated charges for gun possession, assault, and a string of robberies. His descent was so rapid that the court system had not locked him up for any length of time before he made the worst decision of his life.

Around 10 p.m. on June 29, 1996, Wilson—who’d been smoking marijuana—was walking less than 500 yards from his mother’s house on Allentown Road in Camp Springs when someone came up and told him they had “a message” for him. “Another street dude,” Wilson says. “That’s all I knew him about him.”

A brief, threatening conversation ensued. “I didn’t think,” he says. “I just started shooting.” He was 17 years old.

On June 16, 1997, the Circuit Court of Prince George’s County sentenced Wilson to life and referred him to the Patuxent Institution, a prison with educational and therapeutic opportunities for young offenders. For months afterward, he sat in a haze of smuggled marijuana available at the Baltimore prison where he awaited his transfer to Patuxent.

Although communication from his remaining family members quickly tapered off, a phone conversation with his grandfather, dying of cancer, would stick with him. “I don’t understand how somebody that’s smart would purposely do stupid stuff,” his grandfather told him. “That’s not you, man. Promise me you’ll turn your life around.”

With a life sentence, his grandfather’s advice seemed absurd. But just a few months later, alone with his memories and thoughts, a moment of clarity pierced through the fog. “I saw what I had become,” Wilson says. “I started to have an honest conversation with myself.”

He wrote out what he calls his “master plan” of self-improvement. He traded cigarettes to get a spot in a woodworking class. He devoured the prison library, studied Spanish, and earned his GED, as well as a degree from Anne Arundel Community College. With the help of counselors, he also began to untangle his past and face what he had done. In victim impact group meetings, he rediscovered a capacity for compassion. He wanted to learn more about the man who he’d killed and tried to reach out to his family. “All I did was study, go to therapy, and exercise,” Wilson says.

Though it seemed like a pipe dream, he imagined one day starting his own business and employing other ex-offenders as a means of repaying his debt to society.

On November 3, 2006, after a decade of incarceration, Wilson returned to court to meet with Judge Cathy Serrette, newly assigned to his case for a review and potential reconsideration of his sentence based on what he’d accomplished while imprisoned.

“Even if you don’t give me a chance, I’m going to be 77 years old, still learning another language, running the yard, still running my programs,” he told Serrette. “That’s who I am. But if you give me that chance, just watch what I do.”

“I’ll be watching you,” he recalls Serrette telling him. “That master plan is law.”

“I saw what I’d become,” Wilson says. “I started to have an honest conversaton with myself.”

Wilson eventually re-emerged into the outside world six years later, in 2012, at 33, after spending almost half of his life in prison, and not long after learning his mother had died. His biological father had been killed a number of years before. He had been moved into a halfway house in Baltimore and, drawing on connections made in prison, UB became his refuge. Professor Elizabeth Nix quickly took note of Wilson in a class on civil rights. “He never missed a class and always elevated the discussion,” she says. “Chris was an intellectual sponge. I also saw him around campus all the time,” Nix continues. “He told me later he stayed on campus all the hours he was not required to be back at the halfway house, so he could stay focused.”

Nix was contacted by Karen Stokes, executive director of the Greater Homewood Community Corporation, who was looking for someone to organize dialogue between the community and developers. Nix suggested Wilson, who later began recruiting unemployed men and women, often with criminal backgrounds, into job training programs.

“Chris was personally committed to trying to find jobs for these people, or create the jobs himself,” says Stokes. “[It was] his frustration in finding jobs for people with limited skills and work history, who also might have a criminal record and no high-school diploma, that led him to forming his own company that employs people with this background.”

Two of the men Wilson has hired are Tony Hartley, 42, who has been working home-improvement jobs with Wilson for more than a year, and Derick Lilly, 21, who has been with Wilson’s general contracting company for four months.

“I didn’t really learn about [Wilson’s criminal] record until later,” says Hartley, who shares Wilson’s sense of mission and now helps recruit new employees for the business. “I probably have more convictions than him. We learned about our backgrounds around the same time. It brought us a lot closer.”

Lilly says Wilson gave him an opportunity no one else would. “I’m a hard worker, but I’ve been through the system,” he says. “That’s why we get along.” Lilly began working on clean-up, moving, and janitorial service jobs, and now is also taking responsibility for newer hires. “Chris said leadership is what he wants us to do,” Lilly explains. “I teach other people: Use up all the space in the truck so we don’t have to make as many trips—time is money—but don’t be careless and scratch up furniture.”

Jealous, the former NAACP president, first met Wilson as a customer when he needed help with a move. “He and his guys did great work,” says Jealous, who still works and resides in Baltimore. “When he told me he has a furniture-restoration business, I entrusted to him antiques from ancestors who had been born slaves, very precious stuff.”

Jealous says he found he and Wilson had a lot of interests in common, and admires his drive and ability. “He builds teams from people the rest of us, well, people we have seen fit to discard,” Jealous says.

Today, it’s more difficult for other offenders to follow Wilson’s path. Maryland law changed after Wilson’s conviction and now requires judges to rule on sentence modifications within five years of the original sentencing. In Wilson’s case, as his lawyer, Harry Trainor Jr., points out, “Five years in, it would not have been apparent to a judge that he had changed so much.”

At the same time, justice and sentencing reformers have begun to find support for more flexibility in the way juveniles are charged and sentenced, and Wilson has been sharing his story in Annapolis and Washington. When the General Assembly considered bills to expand juvenile offenders’ access to sentencing review and eligibility for parole, the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth invited him to testify before the state House and Senate judiciary committees.

Wilson later summarized his testimony in an opinion piece, “Allow Children Sentenced to Life a Second Chance,” published this past March in The Baltimore Sun.

“He certainly had an impact,” says Nikola Nable-Juris, policy counsel at the campaign. “As a mentor, speaker, and skilled businessman, Chris represents the loss of talent sitting in prison. Several legislators said at the hearing and in person that Chris’s story is one of the most powerful stories they’ve ever heard.”

The legislation did not succeed last session, but Wilson sees incremental progress. “I felt there was a lot of traction,” he says. “People do care.”

“He had an impact. Chris represents the loss of talent sitting in prison.”

Returning to his hometown, he has also shared his story on Capitol Hill with members of Congress.

To Jealous, Wilson demonstrates that “there are individuals who can redeem themselves, and that our society can redeem itself from its addiction to mass incarceration.”

“I hope that people will look at Chris and think of how much more good he could do, how much faster, if we helped,” Jealous says.

Ultimately, says Wilson, who currently will remain on parole for years to come, he’d like to build a coalition of socially conscious companies that employ people, make money, and have an impact in Baltimore.

In the meantime, he draws strength from a vote of confidence he received after speaking at a 2013 national conference focused on helping prisoners re-enter society.

After hearing his story, many attendees crowded around Wilson with questions, including one woman who waited patiently for an opportunity to greet him.

She shook his hand and smiled, needing no introduction.

“‘I didn’t have to let you out,’” Wilson recalls Judge Serrette saying.

“‘I could have just left you in there,’” she told him. “‘But I had a feeling in my gut, and I believed you. I made the right decision. I am proud of you.’”