Why Jerseyland Remains Significant: Through the Eyes of Marcus Nelson

“I’m confident in every single thing I do.” That was the first thing Marcus Nelson told me when I asked how he would describe himself beyond his work. Confidence, for him, wasn’t developed over time or learned through adversity. It was foundational—passed down, reinforced, and lived from childhood onward.

For Nelson, “home” wasn’t just a house. It was a constellation of people—parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins—woven tightly under one roof. He grew up in Jerseyland, a historically Black neighborhood tucked within Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Though small and often overlooked on a map, the community has a long, rich lineage that shaped generations of families—including Nelson's own. 

“I wasn’t afraid to do anything,” he says, remembering the freedom of childhood. “Because I always knew where I could come back to.”

Jerseyland kids didn’t ask for snacks; they picked them. “A bowl of milk, some raspberries, a little sugar—that was it,” he tells me, laughing at the memory of fruit trees that fed entire blocks. Peach trees, plum trees, grapevines curling through fences—nature was generous, and so were the neighbors.

But the true architect of Nelson's inner world was his mother. She denied him television but handed him books—encyclopedias, Aesop’s fables, Hardy Boys, Reader’s Digest. Saturdays meant library trips. Even their games were literary: Scrabble, Boggle, any puzzle that stretched the mind.

“She made us think,” Nelson says. “She always had a book in her hand.”

This quiet shaping did more than teach him to read. It taught him how to observe people, grasp nuance, and value curiosity. 

The Unintentional Writer

The first time Nelson wrote a book, he was in second grade—a small picture story he forgot until a former classmate mentioned it at their 35th high school reunion. The story had even won a school prize, yet the memory had been tucked so far back in his mind that it took decades for it to surface again.

As an adult, he never thought seriously about writing until one book pushed him over the edge. A coworker recommended a novel; Nelson read it and immediately disliked it. Intensely. “It was horrible,” he says with a grin. “And I thought: I can do better than this.”

That annoyance lit a fuse. Soon, he was writing his own stories, blending imagination with the emotional truth that shaped him. His first novel was Born from Weeds and Rats. His psychological thriller, The Night the Rhymer Went Whack, remains one of his personal favorites—a book rooted in his own sensitivity to sound, something shaped in part by hearing loss in one ear.

He writes like he speaks—plain, rhythmic, unfiltered.

“Read it like I’m telling you a story,” he says. “Like we’re talking face-to-face.”

For Nelson, authenticity isn’t just a stylistic choice. It’s non-negotiable.

Jerseyland: The Blueprint

Ask Nelson to define Jerseyland, and he won’t start with landmarks or dates. He’ll start with people. “It’s the definition of community,” he says. “My grandparents started it. Their friends’ kids became our friends. Our friendships go back generations.”

The nucleus of that world was Shady Rest Golf and Country Club—the first Black-owned country club in America. But when Nelson talks about it, he doesn’t lead with the famous names who passed through.

Sure, legends like Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald performed there. His mother remembered being babysat by Sarah Vaughan. His grandfather hunted with Redd Foxx. But these stories were told so casually within the community that young Nelson barely understood how remarkable they were.

To him, Shady Rest wasn’t a celebrity haven—it was a place where families gathered, holidays happened, and the community stayed knit together. “We still meet there for events,” he says. “It connects us.”

In every way, Jerseyland was a blueprint for confidence, belonging, and the unspoken belief that every child in the neighborhood deserved to feel rooted.

Walking Between Worlds

Despite growing up in a Black neighborhood, Nelson attended a school that was 88 percent white. Now he works in a town that’s 95 percent white. Yet he walks through these spaces without tension, without performance, and without shrinking. “Some Black people don’t have that comfort,” he acknowledges. “But because of how we grew up, we learned we belong everywhere.”

This sense of belonging wasn’t arrogance—it was stability. It came from having a neighborhood that felt like home and a community that insisted you were enough.

Nelson believes the effects rippled outward. Many of his white classmates, he says, grew up to be more open-minded and less prone to stereotypes precisely because they knew the kids from Jerseyland. Knowing Nelson and his siblings meant they learned early that Blackness had no single narrative. “They learned to judge people by their character,” he says. “We helped each other grow.”

Writing With Truth, Not Trauma

In an era where trauma-centered storytelling dominates publishing, Nelson chose a different path.“I didn’t grow up with trauma,” he says. “Not everybody did.” Instead, Nelson writes about ordinary human experiences—love, conflict, aspiration, envy—not the stereotyped struggles often imposed on Black narratives. His stories resist the expectation that Blackness must be framed through hardship. He prefers to depict “regular problems,” as he calls them—liking the same girl, dealing with small-town politics, or wrestling with internal flaws.

His writing challenges readers to see Black characters as fully human, not defined by suffering.

Nelson loves history because it cracks open the hidden truths of everyday life. Even in fiction, he is guided by what “probably really happened.” He imagines the inner worlds of long-gone characters: what a 12-year-old boy in 1910 might have feared, or what a wealthy girl in the 1800s might have envied. He sees history not as grand events, but as the accumulation of private emotions.

Still, he’s protective of factual accuracy—especially when it comes to Jerseyland. Recently, a new sign erected near Shady Rest included references to other local Black communities not historically tied to the club. “That’s not the story,” he says firmly. “Tell it how it really was.”

His commitment isn’t sentimental; it’s rooted in truth. For Nelson, history deserves precision.

Carrying it Forward

When asked what he’d tell the next generation of Jerseyland—or any young person searching for their place—Marcus doesn’t hesitate. “Create a network,” he says. “Build relationships. Build community. Know that if you hit rock bottom, you’ve got people who won’t let you fall through.”

These days, Marcus is refining his newest book, Prism, a genre shift that blends science, spirituality, and philosophy. He speaks passionately about energy, atoms, nothingness, and the soul as a force that can’t be destroyed. His mind leaps from physics to empathy with seamless logic.

His curiosity is boundless—but so is his discipline. Everything he writes, whether fiction or metaphysics, is rooted in the same impulse: to understand people and to connect truthfully with them. He is still the boy who grew up on library books and word games, still the young man whose frustration with a bad novel led him to write, and still the adult who treats history like emotional archaeology. And he remains, always, a community member shaped by Jerseyland’s warmth.

Marcus Nelson is, in every way, a product of his environment—but he is also its storyteller, its witness, and its keeper. His work doesn’t just preserve the past; it elevates the values that shaped it.

In a world constantly pushing people to define themselves through spectacle or struggle, Nelson lives by a mantra that is far quieter—and more lasting: Bravery comes from belonging.