This insistence on the full and distinctive Americanness of the Vibe generation influenced the advice Jackson gave to the first raft of writers whom he published at Crown, where he landed in 2000 after the success of ‘‘Step into a World.’’ ‘‘I just told them to bring me their biggest ideas,’’ he says, ‘‘and not to think about what would make a great black book or whatever. The lens that we have is a way in which we can claim the entire world.’’

Jackson’s life before entering the literary arena prepared him well to articulate the polarity of American experience. He grew up in Harlem during the 1970s and ’80s, first in the city housing authority’s Grant Houses, at 125th Street, then in the monolithic Lionel Hampton Houses, then in a tenement nearby. There, Jackson says, ‘‘our downstairs neighbor was murdered, a shooting happened right around the corner while my sister was coming home from school and another neighbor turned his apartment into a crack den.’’

Jackson treats this subject matter-of-factly, with a hint of tragicomedy and an eye sensitive to unlikely beauty: ‘‘Our next-door neighbors were these two boys who became big dealers — they were beautiful boys, S-curls and gold ropes and new Jeep Cherokees parked outside, and always polite,’’ he says. ‘‘And they terrified me.’’

His father died when Jackson was 4, leaving his mother, an observant Jehovah’s Witness, to raise him and his two siblings. Jackson left the church when he was a student at the prestigious Hunter College High School, on the Upper East Side, but returned at the urging of his mother while she battled cancer. She died when he was 18, and when he left the church again in his 20s, it was for good. His official renunciation of the religion meant he was cut off from his siblings.

Image Jackson with Eddie Huang in 2013. Credit... Denise Ortiz

Jackson had already fallen under the spell of publishing during his high-school days, working for a book packager, James Charlton Associates, as part of an internship. He worked at another publishing house before enrolling at Columbia University. Soon, he found his way to John Wiley & Sons. He took part in the quickly intermingling hip-hop and literary scenes of the ’90s, frequenting places like the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and writing his own essays and reviews.

Jackson says that when he looks back at that time, he sees a ‘‘depressed orphan who lost his family to a crazy religion and consoled himself almost exclusively with books.’’ This loneliness was compounded by his feeling that he wasn’t a true native of either of the worlds he inhabited. ‘‘I’d spent my educational and work life from the time I was 7 in predominantly white, semi-elitist institutions,’’ he says. ‘‘The full package made me a little weird.’’ That package also helped him refine an approach to his job that the hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, with whom he worked briefly on a book project, helped him articulate. ‘‘He would always talk about there being two kinds of record executives: inside-the-building guys and outside-the-building guys,’’ Jackson says. ‘‘The inside guy is the one who sits in his office all day, waiting for the talent to land in his lap. The outside guy is the one who’s in the clubs every night, looking for the next big thing, even if they’re not as polished.’’