New Releases by Nathan McCall

A Vintage Shorts Original Selection Twenty years ago, the publication of Nathan McCall’s groundbreaking memoir Makes Me Wanna Holler chronicled a black man’s passage from a life on the block to the prison yards to a journalism career that led to The Washington Post. McCall’s survival had been an act of defiance against a culture and political system designed to keep black men down. Today, from the halls of a revered university, McCall gives thought to how many white Americans remain conditioned to racial blindness and can’t see their way out. Our country’s promise of equality continues to ring hollow, as young black men are murdered on our streets and constrained behind bars in astonishing numbers. In this timely, intimate essay, Nathan McCall reflects on what it means to stand tall and fashion life on one’s own terms, and urges us to recognize that what will make America great is not growing its wealth or might overseas, but doing right by its people at home. An eBook short.

From the “mesmerizing storyteller” (The New Yorker) and author of the bestselling memoir Makes Me Wanna Holler presents a profound novel—in the tradition of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth—that captures the dynamics of class and race in today's urban integrated communities. Barlowe Reed is a single, forty-something Black American who rents a ramshackle house on Randolph Street in Atlanta, just a stone’s throw from the historic birth home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Barlowe, who works as a printer, otherwise passes the time reading and hanging out with other men at the corner store. He shares his home and loner existence with a streetwise, twentysomething nephew who is struggling to get his troubled life back on track. When Sean and Sandy Gilmore, a young white couple, move in next door, Barlowe and Sandy develop a reluctant, complex friendship as they hold probing—often frustrating—conversations over the backyard fence. Members of both households, and their neighbors as well, try to go about their business, tending to their homes and jobs. However, fear and suspicion build—and clashes ensue—with each passing day, as more and more new whites move in and make changes and once familiar people and places disappear. Using a blend of superbly developed characters in a story that captures the essence of this country’s struggles with the unsettling realities of gentrification, Nathan McCall has produced a truly great American novel.

After the publication of his acclaimed autobiography, Makes Me Wanna Holler, a shattering and eloquent account of one man's journey from prisoner to reporter, Nathan McCall traveled and spoke to audiences across the nation. What he saw and heard from people of all backgrounds moved him to write this eye-opening exploration of the politics of race in America. In What's Going On, McCall firmly establishes himself as a commentator for our times, drawing on personal experience and current events to deconstruct the social, cultural, and political tensions that, in clearly seen and not so obvious ways, affect us every day.With his trademark blend of honesty, originality, and insight, McCall takes on some of today's most complex and controversial issues. In the chapter "Gangstas, Guns, and Shoot-'Em-Ups," he advances the debate over violent rap lyrics with powerful firsthand evidence of the harm macho pop culture does to young minds. In "The Revolution Is About Basketball" he shows how the stereotype of blacks' sports supremacy makes a casual game between blacks and whites turn gravely serious. "Old Town" looks at the racial unfairness present in the gentrification of historic African-American neighborhoods. Whether discussing the cultural significance of Muhammad Ali, defending Alice Walker and Terry McMillan from black critics, or illuminating the strained position of the black middle class, Nathan McCall is always straight-shooting and provocative. Written with courage, humor, and an engaging voice, What's Going On is a book for every American.

An explosive, true-life Native Son for the 1990s--a black Washington Post reporter who served time recounts his life and brilliantly shows why prison has become a rite of passage for many young black men. McCall's accounts of the hidden prejudice encountered in seemingly liberal, integrated bastions of the newsroom are eye-opening.