Makes Me Wanna Holler - by Nathan McCall (Paperback)

About the Book

In this "honest and searching look at the perils of growing up a black male in urban America" ("San Francisco Chronicle"), "Washington Post" reporter Nathan McCall tells the story of his passage from the street and the prison yard to the newsroom of one of America's most prestigious papers. "A stirring tale of transformation".--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The New Yorker".

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - One of our most visceral and important memoirs on race in America, this is the story of Nathan McCall, who began life as a smart kid in a close, protective family in a black working-class neighborhood.

Yet by the age of fifteen, McCall was packing a gun and embarking on a criminal career that five years later would land him in prison for armed robbery.

In these pages, McCall chronicles his passage from the street to the prison yard--and, later, to the newsrooms of The Washington Post and ultimately to the faculty of Emory University. His story is at once devastating and inspiring, at once an indictment and an elegy. Makes Me Wanna Holler became an instant classic when it was first published in 1994 and it continues to bear witness to the great troubles--and the great hopes--of our nation.

With a new afterword by the author

Review Quotes

"Not since Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land has there been such an honest and searching look at the perils of growing up a black male in urban America....A compelling depiction of the toll that racism and misguided notions of manhood have taken in the life of one black man-and, by implication, many others."-The San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Nathan McCall grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia. He studied journalism at Norfolk State University after serving three years in prison, and went on to report for the Virginian Pilot-Ledger Star and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution before joining The Washington Post in 1989. He is the author of a memoir, Makes Me Wanna Holler; an essay collection, What's Going On; and a novel, Them. McCall is currently is a senior lecturer in African American Studies at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.