McCall, Nathan 1955(?)-

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McCall, Nathan 1955(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1955, in Portsmouth, VA; son of a factory worker; divorced twice; children: Monroe, Ian, Maya. Ethnicity: "Black." Education: Norfolk State University, B.A.

CAREER:

Journalist, writer, and educator. Reporter, Virginia Pilot/Ledger Star and Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, GA); Washington Post, reporter, beginning 1989; Emory University, Atlanta, GA, lecturer in the Department of African American Studies, beginning c. 1998.

WRITINGS:

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America (autobiography), Random House (New York, NY), 1994.

What's Going On: Personal Essays, Random House (New York, NY), 1997.

Them: A Novel, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2007.

ADAPTATIONS:

The film rights to Makes Me Wanna Holler have been purchased by Columbia Pictures, with John Singleton scheduled to direct.

SIDELIGHTS:

When Nathan McCall first applied for work as a journalist, he hid the fact that he had served three years in prison for armed robbery. Eventually, however, he not only told his future employer—the Washington Post—about his past, he made it the subject of his first book, Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America, published in 1994. What's Going On: Personal Essays, published a few years later, is a collection that presents his views on a variety of subjects relating to racism and the lives of African Americans. In effect, McCall has been hailed as a writer of clear, unaffected prose that articulates the experiences of troubled young black men across America.

"Sooner or later, every generation must find its voice," Henry Louis Gates, Jr., wrote in a review for the New Yorker. "It may be that ours belongs to Nathan McCall." Gates is one of many reviewers who praised Makes Me Wanna Holler. In his autobiography, McCall describes his transformation from an angry and self-destructive criminal to a successful Washington Post reporter. He describes his upbringing in a middle-class section of Portsmouth, Virginia, where he grew up as the son of strict but caring working-class parents. Although he was a good student, McCall was picked on and beaten up by white classmates at his mostly white junior high school. In search of protection, he fell in with a group of tough young black people. "Alone I was afraid of the world and insecure," he writes in Makes Me Wanna Holler. "But I felt cockier and surer of myself when hanging with my boys." The author also notes: "There was no fear of standing out, feeling vulnerable, exiled and exposed. That was a comfort even my family couldn't provide."

Throughout high school, McCall and his "boys" regularly engaged in gang fights, burglaries, and "training" girls—that is, gang-raping them. In 1975, he received a sentence of four weekends in jail for the attempted murder of another black youth. While on probation for the crime, however, he held up a fast-food restaurant, an act that earned him twelve years in prison. During a stint as the inmate librarian, McCall came across the story of another angry black man who ends up in jail: Richard Wright's Native Son. "I identified strongly with Bigger [Thomas, the novel's protagonist]," he recalls in Makes Me Wanna Holler. "The book's portrait of Bigger captured all those conflicting feelings—restless anger, hopelessness, a tough facade among blacks and a deep-seated fear of whites—that I'd sensed in myself but was unable to express."

That an author could describe so clearly the things he himself had been feeling amazed McCall and led him to other books, including The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Slowly, he began to see himself as "an intelligent-thinking human being." By the time he was released on parole after serving just three years of his sentence, McCall had already decided to pursue a career in journalism. Admitted to the journalism program at Norfolk State University, he eventually graduated with honors.

After graduation, McCall worked first for the Virginian Pilot/Ledger Star and then the Atlanta Journal-Constitution before being approached by the Washington Post about a reporting job. Despite the impressive credentials on his resume, he chose to lie on his application in response to a question about whether he had ever been convicted of a felony. McCall revealed his criminal record during the interview process, however, prompting Washington Post officials to reject him. They reconsidered their decision and finally hired him in 1989 to write for the Metro section.

One of the qualities of McCall's writing that initially strikes critics is the power of his narrative voice. As Gates declared: "He is a mesmerizing storyteller whose prose is richly inflected with the vernacular of his time and place. In fact, his colloquial style is so unshowy and unforced that his mastery is easy to overlook."

Many reviewers draw a comparison between McCall and authors such as Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, and Richard Wright—and, more directly, between McCall and the character of Bigger Thomas from Wright's Native Son. "In some respects," Gates wrote, "I'd venture that the young McCall was closer to Bigger Thomas than Wright was."

Still, some critics found that Makes Me Wanna Holler contains its share of flaws. Commenting in the New York Times Book Review, Adam Hochschild expressed "mounting exasperation at the way Mr. McCall blames the white world for almost everything he suffers." Hochschild added: "At the three newspapers … McCall has worked at, in the endless clashes with white colleagues or bosses that he describes, he is always in the right, and the problem is always the other person's racism." However, as Hochschild pointed out: "McCall's anger goes far beyond race, for he seldom gives a shred of credence to the point of view of anyone else, white or black." Hochschild also wrote: "This fury becomes a substitute for any real analysis of why his early life turned out as it did, and of what can be done to save a generation of young black men from the same fate."

Hochschild is not the only reviewer to note McCall's failure or inability to explain the reasons why he turned to crime. However, some critics regard it as one of the book's strengths rather than a weakness. "What sets [Makes Me Wanna Holler] apart from similar works by less talented writers is [its] refusal to oversimplify or offer easy prescriptions for the underclass dilemma," asserted Jack E. White in Time magazine. Gates, too, found McCall's ambiguity "a sign of the fierce honesty that infuses the entire book; he's willing to address the question without pretending to have an answer to it."

In the end, McCall maintains he does not feel a part of mainstream society. "At times I feel suspended in a kind of netherworld, belonging fully neither to the streets nor to the establishment," he writes in Makes Me Wanna Holler.

The media stir that resulted from the publication of Makes Me Wanna Holler prompted McCall to take a leave of absence from the Washington Post in order to promote his best-selling book. An excerpt from it appeared in Newsweek, and McCall became the subject of numerous print and television interviews.

McCall eventually returned to the Washington Post and began work on What's Going On, published in 1997. Maintaining the easy, conversational style of his first book, McCall gives his opinions on racism and contemporary black experiences, including his thoughts on the continued influence of Muhammad Ali, the dangers of "gangsta rap," the identity crisis of the black middle class, black men and basketball, and the death of a former "homeboy." McCall takes issue not only with white leaders but also with blacks who can only view themselves as victims.

Booklist contributor Bonnie Smothers characterized the topics covered in What's Going On as "hot" or "engaging" and praised McCall as "a very savvy practitioner of personal writing." She rated the description of the dead "homeboy" and his grieving mother as the most affecting essay in the collection and noted that teenagers in particular would value the book for its take on contemporary life.

McCall turns from nonfiction to fiction with Them: A Novel. Published in 2007, the book addresses the issue of gentrification, specifically involving whites moving into a black neighborhood. Vanessa Bush, writing in Booklist, commented that the author "offers a sensitive look at the dynamics of gentrification." A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called the novel a "painfully honest portrait of a nation racked by racial mistrust."

In Them, Sean and Sandy Gilmore are a white couple who move into the historically black neighborhood of the Old Fourth Ward in Atlanta, Georgia, where forty-year-old African American Barlowe Reed is also renting a run-down, historic home. Barlowe, who works as a printer and lives with his young nephew, eventually forms an uneasy friendship with the couple as he and Sandy talk over the fence between their neighboring backyards. While Barlowe is often frustrated by his conversations with Sandy, whom he views as naive, he tries his best to accept his new white neighbors. However, as more and more whites begin to move into the neighborhood and make changes, a clash between the area's longtime African American residents and the whites who are literally changing the face of the neighborhood seems inevitable.

"McCall's refusal to conclude his book with a band-aid paean to the healing power of friendship makes Them an exceptionally bracing addition to American novels about race," wrote Laura Miller for Salon.com. Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Erik Gleibermann noted: "McCall can be a keen, satirical observer of off-kilter racial interaction, and he maintains a studied balance in exploring the blind spots between his black and white characters."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

McCall, Nathan, Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America, Random House (New York, NY), 1994.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 1, 1997, Bonnie Smothers, review of What's Going On: Personal Essays, p. 292; September 1, 2007, Vanessa Bush, review of Them: A Novel, p. 57.

Entertainment Weekly, November 9, 2007, Jennifer Reese, review of Them, p. 110.

Essence, November, 2007, Patrik Henry Bass, "Us vs. Them: A Best-selling Author Returns to Bookstores with a Provocative New Story," review of Makes Me Wanna Holler, p. 104.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2007, review of Them.

Library Journal, March 1, 2008, Joyce Kessel, review of Them, p. 126.

New Yorker, March 7, 1994, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., review of Makes Me Wanna Holler, p. 94.

New York Times Book Review, February 27, 1994, Adam Hochschild, review of Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America, p. 11.

Publishers Weekly, January 3, 1994, review of Makes Me Wanna Holler, p. 64; September 1, 1997, review of What's Going On, p. 87; September 3, 2007, review of Them, p. 37; September 10, 2007, Kris Coyne, "PW Talks with Nathan McCall: Living with ‘Them’: After a Memoir and Essay Collection, McCall's First Novel, Them, Takes an Unflinching Look at Gentrification's Race Politics," p. 40.

San Francisco Chronicle, December 23, 2007, Erik Gleibermann, "Black-White Divide Hits Home in Nathan McCall's Them."

Time, March 7, 1994, Jack E. White, review of Makes Me Wanna Holler, p. 58.