Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America

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. For even as he recounts his transformation, McCall compels us to recognize that racism is as pervasive in the newsroom as it is in the inner city, where it condemns so many black men to prison, to dead-end jobs, or to violent deaths. At once an indictment and an elegy, Makes Me Wanna Holler became an instant classic when it was first published in 1994. Now, some two decades later, it continues to bear witness to the great troubles--and the great hopes--of our nation.

With a new afterword by the author

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Published: 01/31/1995
ISBN: 9780679740704
Pages: 432
Weight: 0.71lbs
Size: 8.08h x 5.26w x 0.91d

Review Citations: Booklist 01/01/2001 pg. 979
Publishers Weekly 01/02/1995
Ebony 06/01/2013 pg. 131

Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 12388 / Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America
Reading Level: 6.9 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 29